


Until My Heart Explodes

by TweekTweak



Category: South Park
Genre: Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Forced Prostitution, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder, Self-Defense, Self-Harm, Underage Prostitution
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2020-08-19 08:13:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20206543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TweekTweak/pseuds/TweekTweak
Summary: Craig Tucker, an abused teenager who can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, meets Tweek, who seemed to blend into the background until now. Craig finds himself drawn to Tweek, but can’t seem to get close to him - and where the hell does he keep disappearing to all the time?! Eventually Craig discovers Tweek’s dark secret and the hidden world he is a part of. Will they be able to help each other, or will they just drag each other further down into madness? Story song - Summertime by My Chemical Romance





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Some of this chapter is reworked from one of my old discontinued fics, apologies for any similarities.

Craig starts his Tuesday morning by chain smoking two cigarettes then ducking back underneath his duvet and praying that his bedsheets will swallow him up. Then, when they still haven’t ten minutes later, he sighs heavily, rubs his eyes, and stumbles out of bed. His father is already awake; he can hear the older man yelling from across the hallway, and Craig takes the opportunity to pull on some clothes from his bedroom floor and sneak downstairs to fetch a cup of coffee. He scowls when he discovers there’s no milk in the fridge, and makes his coffee black before sitting at the breakfast table to drink it. His dad is still shouting upstairs, and he can hear his mum crying quietly. Silently wishing he was man enough to charge upstairs and challenge his father, Craig sips half of his bitter coffee before abandoning the chipped mug in the sink, grabbing a hoodie, and leaving through the back door.

It’s snowed overnight, and Craig briefly enjoys the feeling of fresh snow crunching beneath his trainers before the cold air starts to bite at him. It’s February, and the long winter still isn’t showing any signs of relenting, and Craig shoves his hands into his pockets, shivering. School will be warm, he thinks, and a safe haven to boot - although he’s falling behind in most classes and isn’t nearly at the top of the social ladder. Still, he walks towards the grey building and smokes a cigarette, the harsh smoke still easier to breathe than the heavy air in his own childhood home.

Sitting right at the back of the room in his English class, Craig finds himself zoning in and out. The music in his earbuds feels inaudible despite being turned up to eleven, and he’s read the same line in his book about ten times now. Blinking hard to try and focus himself, he instead feels as if he’s floating even farther away, drifting away from his own body. Somehow, when everyone starts packing up after the lesson, he watches himself do it too, not realising any time had passed at all.

The day passes in a haze, quickly - too quickly - and suddenly he’s standing outside the main entrance faced with the painful decision between going home or going anywhere else but there.

Lighting a cigarette, he sits down on the front steps and watches as other students leave in small groups, chatting and laughing; boys mucking around and pushing each other, girls bitching about whatever the latest drama was, and the dregs following behind, holding their instrument cases or on the phone with their parents, demanding to know why they hadn’t been collected yet. Then Craig is all alone on the cold grey steps, and doesn’t have any cigarettes because somehow he’s smoked three and has another half smoked one dangling between his fingers.

Someone sits down beside him, and he looks up to see the school counsellor, Mr Mackey. He expects to get the usual ‘smoking’s bad, m’kay?’ spiel, but instead the counsellor just asks him how he is, and why he’s still sitting here a whole forty-five minutes after the final bell.

Craig doesn’t answer because he’s not really sure how. He’s always kind of liked Mr Mackey - he had a way of somehow understanding the students and seemed to actually care about his work - but how can he explain to this middle aged man that he’s scared to go home and that some days he feels like he’s not really there anymore? The man may be the best thing in the school, but if Craig spilled the beans about his life at home, social services would be straight to the door to split him and his younger sister into separate care homes, and leave his mum alone with the man he called a father.

“I’m just waiting on a lift home,” Craig eventually answers, flicking the butt of his cigarette into a nearby bush. “My dad should be here soon.”

“Are you sure he hasn’t forgotten you?” Mr Mackey jokes, “It’s getting very late, and it’s bloody freezing out here. Have you tried contacting him?”

“Yes,” Craig lies, “His phone was off though. Don’t worry, he’ll be here soon.”

Mr Mackey doesn’t look convinced, and offers to wait with him, or even give him a lift home himself, but Craig politely declines. “He’ll be here real soon, I promise. Or I can walk - it’s not far.”

Mr Mackey looks troubled, but doesn’t press the matter further, and tells Craig to get home safely. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says as he leaves, heading towards the car park.

“Yeah,” Craig says, “Thanks, Sir.”

He sits on the steps for another ten minutes, before eventually getting up. It has suddenly gotten much darker, and it’s probably time to head home, as much as Craig wishes he didn’t have to. He trudges the fifteen minutes home, wishing that his walk was ten times longer, and when he gets in he finds the house miraculously quiet.

Peeking into the living room, he sees his mum sitting on the sofa. She’s watching TV, a tired look on her grey face as she nurses a mug of tea. She doesn’t seem to have noticed him so he backs out quietly and walks upstairs.

Grabbing a pack of smokes from his room before quietly knocking on his younger sister’s bedroom door, he pokes his head into the room and greets the younger teenager. She smiles a crooked grin at him from where she’s sitting crosslegged on her bed, clad in pink pyjama bottoms and a tank top. He briefly mocks the bright blue mask she has slathered over her face, before sitting down on the floor and asking her how her day has been.

Ruby tells him about the funniest thing that happened at school today, and that she passed the maths test she had been dreading, and this and that, and Craig feels happier than he’s felt all day as he listens to her rabbiting on.

Eventually the sensitive subject of their dad comes up, and Ruby tells him that he’s gone to the pub.

The atmosphere in the room noticeably dampens, both siblings quietly dreading the man’s return, but trying to enjoy each other’s company before he does. Craig lights a cigarette and Ruby asks to bum one.

“No way, you’re far too young,” Craig replies, although he knows she’s probably smoked for years already.

She ignores him and grabs the packet, so he shrugs and passes her his lighter. Conversation moves as smoke twirls around the dim ceiling light, and Craig feels a little better about the world until he hears the front door click open.

Looking at each other, the two both tense up and prepare to gauge their father’s mood; drunken cheeriness or drunken rage? Sometimes if his football team had been lucky, or if the fruity had paid out he’d come home in a decent mood, but usually the door would slam shut and his rage would take no hostages.

No slam tonight, but it isn’t long before the sound of their mother crying downstairs alerts the two that it isn’t good news. An argument becomes gradually more audible and then footsteps thud up the stairs and stop outside Craig’s bedroom door. The door opens and closes before Ruby’s door flies open.

Their father stands there, visibly intoxicated and with a large, bloody cut slashed down his left cheek, all the way from his eye to the side of his lip.

“Oh my god,” Ruby gasps in horror, while Craig says nothing, although he silently wonders what hero could have done this so he can buy them a pint.

“You,” their father addresses Ruby, “Shut up and get to bed. You,” he turns to Craig, “Get out of the girl’s room and into yours, ya’ little pervert.”

Disgusted at his father’s implications, he tells Ruby goodnight before following the stench of alcohol out of the room and into his own bedroom with the dull acceptance of what was about to come.

“You see this?” his father addresses him after he closes Craig’s bedroom door, gesturing to the slash on his face as if Craig might have thought he was talking about the colour of the wallpaper or something.

“Yeah, dad,” he replies.

“Bloke who done it came off much worse. They took ‘im off in an ambulance by the time we was done with him.”

Assuming ‘we’ to be his father’s equally unpleasant alcoholic drinking buddies, Craig just says, “Alright.” Presumably his dad was just trying to salvage his ego after losing a fight, although Craig really wished he had gotten himself arrested instead.

“Alright?” His dad sounds irate, as if he’d wanted Craig to ask for details. “Alright. And how was my son’s day?”

“It was fine.”

“Oh, it was fine? Normal, was it? Another day of being a good for nothing little no-user was it?”

Already feeling tense, Craig unintentionally forms a fist without even realising, but it doesn’t go unnoticed by his father.

“You want to hit me son? Go ahead and try it, I dare you.”

Craig ignores him, but continues to get bombarded with taunts and jeers until he angrily yells, “Just fuck off, will you?”

A small sneer curls on his father’s lip.

“And just how dare you talk to me like that? Did me and your mother raise you to give your elders and betters that kind of cheek?”

Craig snorts, thinking of all the times his father had spent at the pub, or disappearing for days at a time while he was growing up. He cherished those times, mind you, when fragments of his mum’s soul would start to heal in the absence of his father. Still, when the man returned he’d break her into even more pieces and leave them scattered through time like little shards of glass on the asphalt.

Craig feels the man grab the front of his shirt. “You know what, Craig? You’re just a fuckin’ mistake - nothing but an accident. I hate your fucking guts.”

“Don’t worry, dad, the feeling’s mutual,” Craig smiles bleakly, and he definitely must have lost it. Mildly concerned that his dad might actually kill him, but not entirely sure he really cares anymore, Craig barely feels it as his back collides with the bedroom wall as he’s forced against it. However he does feel the sharp pain of his father’s fist slamming into his stomach. While his father may have come off worse tonight (unless his version of events was really to be believed), years of bar fights and violence had definitely paid off. Craig tries to throw the man off of him, swinging punches wildly, and he does manage to land one on his dad’s nose with a sickeningly satisfying crunch.

His mum has appeared at some point, Craig notes, and is also trying to prise the man off of him. He eventually pushes Craig to the floor and allows him to pull her away, although not before he spits on Craig’s face.

“Charming,” the latter mumbles as his father pushes his mum aside and stalks out of the bedroom, grumbling profanities and insults under his breath. Craig hears him leave through the back door shortly after, and assumes that he has gone back to the pub to get drunker (and probably prepare for round two).

“You really shouldn’t aggravate him, Craig,” his mum tells him in a tired voice, “You know how angry he gets.”

Wiping his father’s spit off of his cheek with his sleeve, Craig waits until his mum has gone back downstairs before getting up to examine the damage. Closing his bedroom door, he pulls his shirt over his head, pulls off his jeans, and stares at the boy standing in his mirror; slim, pale, and oh-so tired. Messy black hair tangling together, spotty face flushed red from a bitter cocktail of anger and aching bones. New bruises are forming over old scars, mashing together with the older bruises scattering his chest in a black and blue mess. Angry cigarette burns litter his milky skin - one of his father’s favourite twisted games. White and pink scars form a tapestry on his stomach and run right down to his slender thighs. Craig can’t really remember anything else so he supposes it’s okay, and he dresses himself again, turning away from the mirror.

xxxxx

Days pass in a blur. Craig couldn’t tell if weeks or months had gone by, or if it had only been a day. He still smoked with Ruby, and listened to her talk about the drama she and her friends were having, and about the cute new boy in her chemistry class. His chest was still battered and bruised and burned, and his thighs ran red and stung when he wore jeans that were too tight.

School was still a brief haven of solace, and winter was still raging on, and Craig had nowhere to go; nowhere that wasn’t home at least. Mr Mackey had made a habit of striking conversation with him both during school and after the bell, and although it was kind of comforting sometimes, he was getting suspicious of how often Craig would hang around smoking for hours after school was out.

Now, instead of staying at school, Craig just walks and walks. Rain lashes down and his black hair clings to his forehead, sodding wet even through his blue chullo hat. Raw fingers stuffed in his pockets, the grey streets lead him to a deserted playground, abandoned after a newer, more modern one had been built on the other side of town. Finding shelter in a small alcove in the rusting climbing frame, the tinny sound of the rain hitting metal above him soothes him just a bit. Turning the volume up on his iPod to try and drown out the world, he leans back a little, trying his best to relax while he can, before he has to return to his quiet world of bruised ribs and unspoken pain.

Rain drones on, and Craig notices the presence of another; a pale face watching him intently from across the playground. He narrows his eyes, wondering why the hell the person is staring at him, and what they’re doing out here in this weather anyway. He picks out a few details; it’s probably a guy, blond hair glued to their head from the rain, fairly skinny. They’re sitting on one of the swings, still staring at him and Craig figures it’s probably someone tweaking on drugs and not knowing or caring where they are.

He turns his attention back to his music and shuts his eyes, and when he opens them again a few songs later, the other person is sitting on the tarmac, a lot closer than he was before.

“Shit,” Craig swears, jumping and ripping out his headphones, “What the fuck, man?”

“Sorry,” the other shrugs, “Is it okay if I squeeze in? I’m f-freezing.”

Up close, Craig picks out more details, and guesses the boy to be around his age; pale milky skin, hair and clothes soaked through from the icy rain, and a soft smile dancing on his pink lips. Craig rolls his eyes, but shuffles to the side a little. The blond boy squeezes in beside him, and when he’s inside Craig realises he’s shivering.

“What are you doing out here in this?” he asks, “You’re probably gonna die of hypothermia now.”

“I just like it here, don’t you?” The boy doesn’t really answer the question, and Craig raises an eyebrow, looking around the bleak play park with its rusting, graffiti tagged equipment and littered, gum covered tarmac.

“It’s peaceful,” he continues, “I come here to get away from it all.”

Craig doesn’t answer, and the blond boy doesn’t say anything else. The two sit in silence; Craig puts one of his earbuds back in, and the blond silently watches him with shiny green eyes. Craig smokes, and when he offers one to the blond boy it is silently accepted. 

The night gradually begins to come in, and eventually Craig decides that it’s time for him to go home, albeit reluctantly. The other boy is still sitting beside him and Craig looks over to him. He’s still watching him, and he nods lightly when Craig turns to face him. Craig doesn’t say anything, and squeezes out of the alcove, turning to look at the blond one more time before he starts making his way back towards the main streets and towards his father’s rage.

When he gets home his father is drunk, and his mum is crying. Craig sneaks past the living room and upstairs, wet trainers squelching quietly against the old carpet as he goes. Peeling off wet clothes and pulling on a dry t-shirt to cover his skinny injured body, he crawls under the warm comforter and tries to drown out the sounds of his father’s rage with loud angry music. Of course, it isn’t long until his bedroom door is thrown open, the wood cracking in pain as it hits against the opposite wall. Despite the days passing in a blur, he’s all too present as the older man attacks him, throwing him around the room like a rag doll.

The assault feels as though it lasts a lifetime, but eventually he’s left alone broken on his bedroom floor, the taste of blood bitter in his mouth. Ruby taps his door, then enters quietly. Pulling him onto the bed, they sit and smoke, skirting around the fact that Craig’s lip has started to swell painfully. It stings when he talks, when he exhales plumes of grey smoke. His body aches and his chest feels as though it might cave in on him, and he just wants to collapse into bed and get lost in the soft cotton sheets. He tells Ruby he’s tired, and she nods, kissing the top of his head gently.

“Goodnight, Craig,” she says as she stands and turns to leave his room, “I love you.”

Craig smiles a weak smile at his younger sister, before falling back onto his duvet and wrapping himself up. His bones feel heavy, his chest burning with each rise and fall, while the feather down blankets do their best to soothe him. Closing his stinging eyes, he lets them tangle and wrap around him, softly constricting him into a tight cocoon in which he can pretend to feel safe, at least for a while.

Craig doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep for when he wakes up to the sound of a loud crash from somewhere outside of his room. He lies there in the dark for a moment, heart racing, trying to work out whether or not he had just dreamt the noise. A sliver of light creeps into his room as the door opens quietly.

“Craig?” Ruby’s whisper breaks the silence, “Did you hear that?”

He sits up and flicks his bedside lamp on to look at her, nodding. She’s bleary-eyed and tired, but has a worried look on her face. Someone sobs quietly from their parents’ room, and the two recognise it as not their mum, but their father’s voice.

Ruby takes charge, walking quietly towards their parents’ closed door with Craig following behind her, and she gently pushes it open, neither of them knowing what to expect will be waiting on the other side.

“Dad?” she whispers as the door creaks open, then she gasps, then lets out a tangled cry. Craig leans over her shoulder, grabbing the doorframe with one hand and Ruby’s shoulder with the other, to keep from sinking to his knees.

Their father looks up at them from where he’s sat on the bed, tear glazed eyes seeming to look right through the two of them.

On the floor is their mum, the dark stain on the carpet beside her dirty-blonde head growing bigger and bigger and bigger.

xxxxx

Craig doesn’t notice that he’s back in the playground until he’s there, dressed in all black. The skies are grey and dull, as if they know how he’s feeling, holding back the rain like the tears he wants to shed but can’t. The funeral was four hours ago; fresh wounds sting as his trousers rub, and Craig has smoked nearly a full packet of cigarettes today alone. People came, they mourned, and then they all left to eat little cheese and ham sandwiches and cocktail sausages, and Craig doesn’t understand because the last thing he wants is to eat party food and drink wine; he just wants to walk and walk, and go somewhere where he won’t be found.

Still, the empty park will do for now, he supposes. He sits down on one of the swings, the rusted chains screeching in agony as he weighs them down, and just thinks. He thinks of his mum, how she had put up with his father for so long - too long - and somewhat bitterly of how she hadn’t left him. She had put that man before her own children, and Craig couldn’t bring himself to forgive her for that, not now. Still, she was safe now, away from him in a quiet, cold repose.

His father avoided prison, somehow; despite his criminal past and history of domestic violence, Mrs. Tucker’s death would be forgotten as a tragic accident. It boiled Craig’s blood, imagining her fear as he brought her to the ground, the side of her head cracking hard against the corner of the nightstand. Did she know she was going to die? Was it liberating in some way? Did she think of him, of Ruby, as she slipped away from the man who had made her life hell for the past twenty years?

Chains groan to the left of him, and Craig looks up.

“Hi,” says a familiar shock of blond hair and green eyes.

“Hey.”

The boy starts kicking against the tarmac, pushing himself higher and higher towards the grey skies as if he wants to fly away, and Craig thinks that’s not a bad idea. He swings a little, without realising it.

“I’m Craig,” he says quickly, in the brief seconds the blond is swinging past him, remembering he hadn’t introduced himself previously.

“I know,” the other replies, laughing a little, “You’re in my English class.”

Craig shouldn’t be surprised; after all, he barely knows if he’s coming or going these days, but he still feels his cheeks flush a little. “Oh. Sorry.”

The boy doesn’t answer, but a few minutes later he drags his battered Converse along the tarmac, slowing himself and eventually stopping to sit and watch Craig with those green, green eyes.

“I’m sorry about your mum,” the blond says, and Craig nods. News travelled fast in South Park, and although he was beginning to get sick of people feigning concern and sadness, he didn’t really mind it now. This boy seemed genuine, as though he was sad _with_ Craig, not for him. He looked like he knew, understood things, and didn’t say anything else, but quietly mourned with him.

“I miss her,” Craig says and the blond nods.

“It will get easier,” he says, “As time goes on, you’ll heal.”

The two sit in silence for a while, occasionally swinging back and forth, and Craig stares up towards the heavens and imagines his mum watching him, finally at peace after so many years.

Eventually, the blond leaves as quickly and quietly as he appeared, almost as though he had simply vanished into thin air. Craig looks up from his iPod and there’s nothing but an empty swing gently swaying beside him, no trace of the boy from English class in sight.

He’ll have to go home sometime too, Craig supposes, but decides he’ll just stay a little longer. Sleet starts falling gently, slushy puddles forming on the tarmac, wet funeral clothes chilling him down to his bones. He sits, and he smokes, grey plumes dancing through through the cold air freely, and he sighs. Now that his mum was gone, he was bearing even more of the brunt of his father’s drunken aggression at home, and he was worried; worried that Ruby would become a target after the breakdown of one of the protective barriers between them. His sister was small, petite, kind, and he was worried that she’d get in the way, that she might try and step in between one of their arguments, and their father would snap her skinny body as easily as one might snap a twig.

It’s a Sunday, after a long week of grieving under a thick air of sadness. School is a safe place, an oasis of calm, and Craig briefly considers camping out underneath the rusting climbing frame for the night, before he picks up his heavy body and trudges home through puddles and painful bones, not ready to face his father’s scarred, angry face and broken bitter eyes.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s nothing though, but the quiet constant of rain tapping against the cold glass of the window, dribbling and dripping down the pane. After a while Craig lets his mind begin to wander slightly in the darkness, letting it settle on blond locks and milky skin, and conversations that felt more like riddles that he couldn’t quite decipher.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I wasn't going to update this so quickly but this story is all I've been able to think about for these past few days!

The nights are agonisingly long, and schooldays unforgivingly short, but he cherishes them while they last.

The chaotic crush of the school corridor on Monday morning batters Craig’s body as it pulls him along. Unwitting students brush against his aching frame as they make their way sleepily to classes, the rubbing against his concealed wounds serving as a painfully unwelcome reminder of the home life he can’t seem to escape. Lost in the crowd of chatter, hormones, and Lynx body spray, he can briefly try and imagine what it would be like to be someone else, any other student who looks forward to going home instead of dreading the very sound of the final bell. Then, all of a sudden the corridors are empty and quiet again, and he’s just Craig, leaning against a wall of lockers, trying to ignore the stinging of his wounds, and willing his legs not to give way entirely.

His first class of the day is English, and a flash of blond at the front of the room catches Craig’s attention like it never had done before. When registration is called, it answers to Tweek Tweak, then steals a glance back towards Craig after it does, green eyes meeting Craig’s own muddy brown ones. Then, suddenly, those green eyes are everywhere; when Craig absently lets himself be washed through the hallways between classes, they’re passing in the opposite direction; in gym class, as Craig sits in the shadows huddled under long sleeves and excuses of a forgotten P.E. kit, they’re watching him intently from the goal posts; at lunch they’re sitting at an adjacent table, and Craig can feel them burning into his back as he picks at his cheese sandwich.

Quietly wondering if Tweek had always been there, simply blending into the unwashed crowd of teenagers in the school hallways, Craig takes quick looks over at Tweek when he thinks he won’t be noticed, studying the soft features carved into the blond boy’s freckled face. He’s feminine, small, and he looks almost fragile, as though he’d smash like a porcelain doll if you were too rough with him. Occasionally Tweek catches Craig watching him, the corners of his pink pouty lips tugging upwards a little. Craig never looks away, just lets those green eyes draw him further in, making him want to learn more and more.

The weight of another sitting down beside him on the bench snaps Craig’s attention away from the blond, and he turns around to the sympathetic face of Mr Mackey.

“Hello, Craig. How are you today?” he asks, and Craig shrugs. How are you supposed to feel when your mother died three weeks ago, and the man who ripped the life from her has faced no repercussions?

Swallowing the lump forming in his throat, Craig gruffly replies, “I’m fine.”

The teacher gives him a sad smile, and pats him on the shoulder; of course he knows that Craig isn’t fucking fine, but mercifully doesn’t press the issue further. Instead he takes a bite out of a sandwich and the two sit in an amicable silence. Despite feeling eyes boring into him, watching him eat lunch with the guidance counsellor of all people, Craig feels a little comforted by Mr Mackey’s presence and chokes down a few more bites of his own lunch.

“Remember,” Mr Mackey’s voice breaks the silence, “You’re always more than welcome to come along to the support group after school.”

Craig snorts slightly, making the teacher frown slightly. Mr Mackey’s ‘support group’ was where the weird kids like Butters Stotch went to try and make equally weird friends. “Uh- it’s not really my kind of thing, sorry.”

“We have some excellent bereavement resources,” Mr Mackey continues, “As well as some other students who have been through similar experiences - you might find it helpful.”

Craig shrugs and says he’ll think about it, privately knowing that he’d much rather continue trudging the cold grey streets of South Park and chain-smoking for hours than attend some poxy after school club.

And so that’s how he spends his time, often heading towards the old park without even realising his feet are carrying him there (or, Craig pretends he doesn’t realise, at least). Despite not having run into Tweek there for a while, he begins to understand what the blond had meant about it being a peaceful place; barely anyone ever passed through while he was there, other than a few groups of kids from his school who were blatantly there to deal their shitty home-grown. Otherwise, it seemed to be the only place where he could get more than one moment of peace anymore; home was a nightmare, of course, and although school was safe it was loud, hectic, and it just seemed to carry him through his life before he even knew that it was passing.

A few weeks go by before he properly bumps into Tweek again. Despite his constant presence at school, neither of the two had made any attempt to speak and instead resigned themselves to stealing glances during English class and in the canteen, and Craig was beginning to miss the company. There was something about Tweek, something that Craig couldn’t put his finger on, that made him want to know more; it was an alien feeling for Craig, so used to being alone, and one that he wasn’t sure if he liked or disliked yet.

Droplets of rain slam into the pavement like icy bullets, and Craig hears the feeble protest of rusty chains as someone takes a seat on the damp swing to his left.

“Hey,” he says, without bothering to look up from the cigarette dangling between his fingers.

“Hi,” Tweek answers.

Craig toys with his next question for a moment, but decides to ask anyway, “Were you always there? At school?”

“We’ve been in the same classes for four years now,” the blond replies, “If that’s what you mean?”

The two sit together quietly for a while, letting the sound of rain hitting tarmac and rustling through tree branches drown out the faint hustle and bustle of the streets beyond them, and Craig wonders how Tweek had gone unnoticed till now.

The cold air burns Craig’s lungs as he breathes it deeply, letting the crisp freshness of late March wrap around his chest in a tight embrace. The first signs of spring were beginning to peek tentatively over the horizon, and Craig silently wishes he could stay trapped here forever, just him and Tweek and the cold winter rain. The arrival of spring meant that spring break was just around the corner, and school holidays were to be feared in the Tucker household. School was Craig’s escape, and without it he would be sporting bruised eyes and broken teeth for weeks, with no one around to care.

Fear prickles up Craig’s spine at this realisation, and he visibly bristles. Taking a particularly harsh drag on his cigarette, he flicks the butt away into a nearby puddle where it fizzles out, before kicking back on the swing, pushing himself higher and higher and wishing he could just keep going until he reached the sky.

Eventually though, he has to come back down, battered trainers scuffing hard against the wet ground, bruised ribs aching inside his chest - a painful reminder that he hadn’t managed to escape, not yet. If only it were that easy to leave this life behind, to just forget about his father, and the fact that he was afraid of the one place he was supposed to feel the safest.

“My mum died too,” Tweek’s voice breaks the silence unexpectedly, “And it f-fucking hurts sometimes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I miss her. Sometimes old wounds hurt just as much as new ones.”

Studying the smaller boy’s soft, freckled face, Craig feels a little bad when he doesn’t know how to reply, or how to articulate that he knows exactly what Tweek means in more ways than the blond probably realises.

“I- I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Tweek swings a little, “It was a long time ago now. It’s one of those things that will never leave you though, Craig.”

Tweek sounds sad and serious, and there’s a distant look inside his foggy green eyes that Craig doesn’t like.

“I have to go,” Tweek says, standing up.

“Will I see you again?” Craig asks quicker than he expects or means to.

Tweek looks back at him wordlessly, his face unreadable. “I hope so.”

xxxxx

Spring break is as painful as Craig had expected.

Without guidance counsellors or social workers to worry about, it feels as though the beatings come three times as frequently, and at least ten times more aggressively. In the mirror Craig can scarcely recognise himself through the bruised eyes and cut lips.

“Your mother is _dead_,” his father spits at him between blows, “And it’s your fuckin’ fault.”

A fist collides with Craig’s cheek, knocking one of his front teeth loose. He spits it into his palm along with a mouthful of blood, a fracture of a second before the fist slams back into the side of his head. Craig’s vision blurs as a hand fists in his black hair painfully.

Crying out as a patch is ripped from his scalp, involuntary tears prick in Craig’s eyes.

A disgusted look finds its way onto his father’s stony face, steely eyes narrowing as he snarls, “My son; a crying little _pussy._”

He releases his grip on Craig’s hair, letting the younger fall to the ground as he stalks out of the room, slamming the door as he goes.

Pain rips through Craig’s body like a knife as he breathes a bittersweet sigh of relief. For a while he simply lies there, too exhausted to get up and face the damage, so instead he makes do with staring up at the ceiling, black dots clouding his vision and blood pounding loudly inside his ears. He expects Ruby to knock on his door gently, to help him get to his feet, for them to sit together quietly and smoke and cry. She doesn’t though. Of course, she had gone out with friends. Craig pulls himself to his feet, and avoids the mirror out of fear of what cold hard truths it might show.

Peeling away his blood splattered shirt and replacing it with a clean one, he pulls on a hoodie and some trainers and makes his way downstairs soundlessly, tiptoeing past the open living room door. His father doesn’t look up from the sports game he’s watching on TV, and Craig escapes through the front door alive, if only just.

His muscles burn with each step he takes as he charges down the street, away from his empty shell of a home. Trainers splashing through murky puddles, he chews furiously on his swollen lower lip and silently wonders what he ever did to deserve this life, to warrant this treatment from a man who was supposed to love him unconditionally. Pulling his chullo hat further down his head and hiding his bruised and bloodshot eyes behind dark hair, he knows exactly where he wants to be, and who he wants to be with.

Tweek is there when he arrives, sat cross-legged atop the rusting metal slide. The expression on his face - one of being lost in deeply troubling thoughts - doesn’t change when Craig approaches, but green eyes watch him intently as he lays down on the cold metal of the slide below.

Craig is grateful that Tweek doesn’t comment on his black eyes or bloody lip, appreciating the mutual silence they share. It comforts Craig, just lying in the knowledge that the other boy is there observing him with those sparkly green eyes; quiet companionship that slightly dulls the pain throbbing from his bruised cheek and the aching of his battered bones.

Fluffy clouds drift lazily above them, flashes of pale pastel blue peeking tentatively through them, and Craig silently dares the sun to show its face. It didn’t seem fair that the sun could continue to shine happily while he lay there broken and beaten, but of course, the rest of the world was only happy if it left Craig Tucker with a bitter taste in his bloody mouth, right? That was certainly how it seemed to him, anyway.

Craig scowls and shoves his headphones into his ears, turning on the angriest song on his playlist and shutting his eyes, letting harsh screaming drown out the sound of the breeze.

It’s dark when Craig opens his eyes what feels like minutes later, with only a couple of old weathered street lamps to cast dim amber puddles of light through the park. Tweek is gone, and Craig winces in pain as he heaves his weary body from the icy steel he was lying on.

Beginning his walk back towards home and his father, music still blaring deafeningly loud inside his headphones, Craig feels the first drops of evening rain fall from the now greying skies. He lets it hit against his face as it gradually grows heavier, and Craig wonders if this is what it feels like to cry.

The rain continues to pick up as he trudges through the bleak street, an inconceivably strong sickly feeling growing in the pit of his stomach with each corner he turns.

Soaked through to the bones and altogether too quickly, he arrives at his front door which is sitting slightly ajar. Confused and unnerved, he enters the silently stagnant building and closes and locks the door quietly behind him, throwing the hallway into complete darkness.

Peeking into the living room, his father’s chair sits abandoned, the TV muted but still flickering dimly in the corner.

Climbing the stairs, Craig’s ears pick up the sound of muffled crying, which grows more audible the higher he ascends. Realising the noise is coming from inside his younger sister’s bedroom, he all but kicks her door clean off of its hinges.

Ruby yelps as he does, jumping and looking up at him from where she sits on her bed, hugging her knees to her chest tightly. Wide blue eyes full of tears and mascara running tracks down her blotchy cheeks, her lip starts to shake.

“What the fuck is going on?” Craig demands, sitting down beside Ruby and putting an arm around her.

“Where were you?” her voice is shaky and scared, “There was a man-, he took dad-, I-, you weren’t here!”

“What man?” Craig asks, “Was it Stuart? Skeeter? Darryl?” he lists off a few of his father’s more unfavourable associates, hoping that he’s lying dead in a ditch somewhere, and Ruby shakes her head, tears still brimming in her eyes.

“No, I- I don’t know, I didn’t get a good look. I was so scared, Craig. Where were you?”

Craig wraps her in a tight hug and apologises, feeling guilty that he wasn’t there to do something, anything to protect her. She was only fourteen, and it pained him to see such fear in her wide eyes, to see her cowering in fear in her own pink pastel bedroom because of their father’s aggression. If seeing their mother lay dying on the floor hadn’t already broken her, god only knew she was ready to crack like glass.

“Craig, what happened to your tooth?” she asks suddenly, concerned, reminding Craig of the fresh gap tarnishing the front of his smile (not that he did much of that these days).

Rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably, Craig brushes over most of the details of the assault he’d faced earlier while she was away, but it doesn’t stop Ruby’s lip from trembling and fresh tears spilling down her black stained cheeks.

Turning off the light, they lay down together and talk, and Craig holds his sister close. He was scared for her, much more than he’d ever feared for himself, and the pain in her face when she looked at his wounds hurt more than the wounds ever could.

Without their father stumbling drunkenly through the house spitting venomous threats and insults, the silence was deafening. Ruby eventually falls asleep, an unsettled look still glued to her face even as she does. Craig keeps holding onto her tightly as he remains awake, waiting and listening intently for any noise outside that might signal the return of their father, while at the same time silently praying it never comes.

There’s nothing though, but the quiet constant of rain tapping against the cold glass of the window, dribbling and dripping down the pane. After a while Craig lets his mind begin to wander slightly in the darkness, letting it settle on blond locks and milky skin, and conversations that felt more like riddles that he couldn’t quite decipher.

Craig doesn’t realise the sound of the rain is lulling him to sleep until he jerks awake to the figure of a man towering in the doorway, the smell of cheap whisky hanging heavy in the air.

“Well,” a deep, drunken voice slurs, “What the _fuck _is goin’ on in here then?”

Craig sits up a little and rubs his sore eyes, while Ruby remains fast asleep beside him, blissfully oblivious.

“Dad?” he asks.

“Shut the fuck up, you sick little pervert,” is the reply.

Craig looks down to where Ruby is sleeping and a lump forms in his throat when he realises that one of her breasts has slipped out of her tank top at some point during the night.

“Dad- shit, this isn’t what it looks like.”

“I don’t want to wake your sister,” the older man snarls, “So I’d suggest you get to your own room and we’ll deal with this.”

Fear and dread pooling somewhere deep inside, Craig silently mouths ‘sorry’ to Ruby before allowing his father to lead him out of her room.

As soon as his own bedroom door closes, he’s thrown to the ground and a steel toe-cap is painfully delivered to his ribs.

“How long has this been going on for?” his father asks as Craig bites down on his lower lip to keep from crying out in sheer agony.

“Nothing’s going on,” he chokes out, his lip stinging where pointy incisors had dug in too hard, “I promise. I found Ruby scared and alone - I couldn’t just leave her like that!”

His father scoffs, and continues to kick at him hard. Craig yelps, pressing his eyes tightly shut and wondering how much fucking more of this he can take; how many more of these brutal beatings his slender body can take before it starts shutting down.

“Scared? No wonder! I’d be scared too if I had a beast for a brother! That girl had a bright future, and she doesn’t need you ruining it! Sick freak!”

Rage and hurt prickle inside of Craig, so much worse than the physical pain being inflicted upon him, as he pulls away sharply from the kick his father is preparing to deliver.

“It’s _you_ she’s fucking scared of!” Craig sees red, hearing the scream leave his mouth as he drags himself up from the floor before throwing himself at the older man, half hoping that he might find the strength inside to kill him.

He doesn’t, of course, and the blows he does manage to land don’t appear to affect the larger man in the slightest, as his fists keep raining down like thrown rocks. Soon enough, Craig finds himself on his back once again, and after a while he can scarcely feel the unrelenting attacks anymore. Numbness overcomes him as he curls in a foetal position, the kicks to his ribs no longer hurting but merely an annoyance, and he clenches his eyes tightly shut and wonders if they’ll ever even open again.

Eventually it seems as though his father gets bored, as the attacks stop, and when Craig opens his eyes he’s alone in his room.

Craig feels like a broken toy as he pulls himself up from the grubby carpet, brain cloudy and vision spinning. The first light of dawn peers over the horizon and streams in through his open curtains, the light nipping at his bloodshot brown eyes. He can hear Ruby crying softly from her room, suddenly aware that she’d probably been awake the whole time, listening quietly as his body was battered and broken and abused just next door. His ears begin to ring loudly, his pale skin begins to crawl, and he almost doesn’t hear the creak of his father re-entering the room behind him. Turning around shakily, he just has time to catch sight of his dad approaching rapidly, arm raised high over his head, bruised fist clutching an empty whisky bottle by its neck.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tweek lays back onto the damp grass, looks up at Craig intently. “When you wake up in the morning, and your lingering dreams ebb away,” he asks stoically, “Does it hurt you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who has read, commented, and left kudos so far!

Craig’s muddy brown eyes sting as he peels them open, rubbing away a thick layer of crust and pain.

Warm sunlight streams in through his bedroom window and pools on the carpet he’s sprawled out over, making his head hurt more than it already did - Craig didn’t know how that was even possible. It seemed to be late afternoon, although he couldn’t be sure of which day. His head was fuzzy, as though he’d been drinking heavily, but Craig knew better, knew that the lingering stench of cheap liquor and the Jack Daniels bottle that lay shattered around him was the work of his father.

He lets himself just lie there for a while, next to dust bunnies and dirty socks, willing for the throbbing pain in his head to ease off even slightly. Quietly, he thinks of the previous night - or however long ago it was now - and squeezes his eyes shut again, breath hitching in his throat. He could feel in the air that his time was coming fast; any day now he was going to give up trying, after skating on thin ice for far too fucking long. That, or he would meet the same end as his mum had, and find himself rolling six feet under.

Fuck, his dad was probably downstairs right now getting drunk and hoping that Craig never moved from the bedroom floor.

Old wounds sting him as he stands and turns to face his dirty mirror, fearing what might be there waiting to look back at him. And when he does there’s blood, of course; stemming from a nasty cut on his forehead, it has smudged over his pale, spotty face, and dried into a deep crimson mask for him to hide behind.

Showering helps, if only a little. The scalding water and steam rinse away the blood and manage to loosen a few of the knots in his back, but, no matter how much he lathers it up, the strawberry scented shower gel doesn’t wash away his injuries, and his skin aches as he pats it dry with a soft cotton towel. His mum’s shampoo bottles and fancy soaps watch him sadly from where they sit, still abandoned in the same spot she’d last put them down all those weeks ago, leaving relics of her lingering presence in the house. They hold her there, and sting Craig like the cut on his forehead never could.

xxxxx

Craig finds Tweek sitting squashed inside the alcove beneath the rusty climbing frame, almost as though he’d been expecting him, his head resting delicately in one of his tiny hands. His face is vacant, unreadable, and when Craig draws close enough to notice Tweek’s eyes he spots an emptiness in them that he had never before. Craig doesn’t like it.

“Hi,” he greets with a weak attempt at a smile, as he squeezes in beside the smaller boy, shifting his weight until he finds a position that puts minimal pressure on his aching bones.

Tweek doesn’t reply for a few moments, eventually settling with a small, “Hi, Craig.”

They sit in silence and Craig bathes in the tranquility, listening to the sound of rain as it patters through the leaves that had just begun to bloom and drummed tinnily against the weathered metal above them. Craig liked that he could just _be_ with Tweek, without the silence becoming uncomfortable, like it were the most natural thing in the world.

The sound of Tweek sighing beside him breaks the silence, and Craig looks up, asks if he’s alright.

“Do you ever wonder,” Tweek starts, “If there’s more to life than this; about what’s out there past the mountains?”

The questions catch Craig off guard, surprise him, and he has to search for an answer. Of course, he’d spent plenty of time imagining what it would be like to leave South Park behind, what would happen if he were to board a bus to Denver airport and buy a one way ticket to anywhere else. Not to mention he’d always dreamed of discovering something outside of his day to day reality of beatings and tiptoeing around his own home. He wanted something better, something bigger than the fear instilled in him by his father.

Craig studies the blond sitting beside him, drinking in his milky skin and the galaxies freckled across his pale cheeks, watching as the wind lifts a lock of his blond hair as it tugs through it.

Sure, many people wanted to leave the stony grey streets of South Park, certainly, but Craig got the feeling that Tweek had meant something more. He felt as though Tweek had felt true pain in his life - not the pain that kids like Henrietta Biggle complained of as they sipped black coffee in Benny’s Diner -, _real _pain that crushes you through and through, and leaves your soul raw and exposed. Craig felt as though Tweek was like him in a way, although how he couldn’t quite decipher yet.

“Sometimes, dude. Sometimes.”

Craig shifts a little closer to Tweek, letting body warmth and the smell of minty shampoo wrap around him, and two soft hands nudge together if only a little. There’s quiet again, Craig using his free hand to pick at a stray thread on his jeans, while Tweek turns his head to gaze up towards the murky grey skies almost wistfully.

“I have to go,” Tweek says, “I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”

He wriggles out of the small alcove, and Craig’s heart trembles just enough for him to notice as Tweek’s hand is wrenched away from his own.

“Would you like me to, uh, walk with you?” he suggests gruffly, immediately feeling as though he’d been too forward - they’d only spent time together at the park until now, would it be inappropriate to take things beyond the barrier of trees and tarmac? Did Tweek even want that to happen, for that matter?

Tweek shakes his head vehemently, wisps of blond flopping down in front of his eyes, “No, Craig.” Then, when Craig doesn’t manage to hold back the disappointment that flashes across his face he cryptically adds, “But tomorrow is a new day.”

“Do you always talk like that?” Craig frowns, watching as Tweek turns to leave, “Like you want to leave me with more questions than answers?”

A quick flash of shiny teeth is the only response he gets, and then Tweek is gone and Craig ponders on how the blond seemed to have the ability to just disappear and blend into the background, while simultaneously being one of the only constant presences in his life.

Deciding that Tweek was weird, and trying to get that cheeky grin out of his head, Craig doesn’t realise he’s home until he’s lying in bed, barely feeling the metal that he’s watching cut into his thighs. As he’s blinking heavily and wondering how he got there, Ruby enters, making him jump and pull the duvet over his bleeding legs sharply.

“I’m heading to school,” she says, “Are you coming?”

School? Was spring break really over? Had Craig really been on autopilot for days and days? At first he thinks Ruby’s trying to fuck with him, pulling some kind of practical joke, but no - her hair was slicked into a tight up-do and her backpack was slung loosely over her shoulder. Unable to find any trace of insincerity on her face, Craig tells her to go on without him and collapses back down onto his pillows.

A lunch tray smacks down onto the table next to him, startling Craig to the realisation that he’s sitting in the canteen with an untouched plate of mushy spaghetti bolognese in front of him.

“Hey,” Tweek sits down beside him on the bench, and Craig realises it’s the first time they’d had real contact outside of the safety of the parks’ leafy barrier and weathered play equipment.

“Oh, hi.”

“I haven’t seen you for a while. Are you alright?”

Craig lies a yes through his clenched, gap teeth and gets the impression that Tweek can see through his bullshit immediately. Ignoring the raised blond eyebrow, Craig turns his fork through the pasta listlessly.

“You’re like me,” Tweek comments, observing Craig who feels as though the blond is staring straight through his muddy brown eyes, broken teeth, and the fading yellow bruise still lingering faintly on his acne scarred cheek. It feels as though Tweek is looking at the Craig hiding behind the gruff, uncaring exterior, cutting away all the bullshit and staring directly into his soul. “You’re running from something,” he continues, “Something bad.”

“Everyone has some shit in their lives,” Craig shifts in his seat a little uncomfortably, Tweek’s gaze making him feel slightly raw.

“Failing a maths test, or being dumped by your prom date is ‘some shit’, Craig,” Tweek frowns, looking bothered by something unsaid, “You and me; we’re different. I see you hiding - here, at the park -, and I see me.”

Then he changes the subject as quickly as it had come up, steering towards lighter topics. Craig lets him chatter away, occasionally punctuating with an, “Oh,” or a “Hmm,” while trying to unpick Tweek with his mind, trying to unscramble the demons lurking right at the back of his bright green eyes.

“Will I see you tonight,” Craig asks when Tweek finishes what’s left of his lunch and stands up, “At the park?”

“I hope so,” Tweek’s eyes don’t meet Craig’s own as he replies, biting down on his lower lip sharply, “I really hope so.”

He doesn’t though, despite Craig lying patiently in wait on the rusting slide for what feels like hours, watching fluffy white clouds drifting overhead. Craig worries a little, finding himself deeply concerned for Tweek’s safety even though that was ridiculous because he’d probably just found something better to do than hang out with Craig. But even still, all the cryptic words and blank stares had to be adding up to something, and it was putting Craig so on edge that he could have screamed with relief when he spots Tweek at school the next morning.

“Are you alright?” he asks, pulling Tweek aside in the hallway before second period and not caring that his words sound needy and irate, “Where were you last night?”

“Oh, I-,” Tweek is caught off guard by the ambush and Craig does feel a little bad as he looks down at the smaller boy’s owlish expression as he clutches his schoolbag tightly to his chest, “Sorry. I was- busy.”

Tweek’s falter doesn’t go unnoticed, and it troubles Craig to no end for the rest of the day which passes in a blur of mental scenarios ranging from Tweek being too busy hooking up with another guy from their class (which, I mean, not that Craig cared, right? Obviously.), to ones scarily similar to his own home life, with Tweek cowering away from an angry black silhouette that towers over him.

“What’s wrong?” Tweek asks pointedly, cocking his head to one side.

They’re in the park again, crosslegged on the tarmac, with Craig losing fantastically to a game of rummy.

“Hmm?” Craig doesn’t look up from his terrible hand of cards.

“Something is bothering you; come on, spit it out. Is it the fact that you are unbelievably awful at cards? Because we can stop if you want.”

Finally looking up to meet the blond’s gaze, Craig’s breath hitches when he realises that Tweek had moved much closer all of a sudden. How hadn’t he noticed that?

“No, it’s not that - although you’re right, I fuckin’ suck -,” he starts, “I dunno, man. It’s just fucked up.”

“What is?”

“Everything.”

Tweek laughs at that, “Hit the nail right on the head.”

“But with you,” Craig continues, “It all feels a little less fucked, I guess. It’s weird.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Tweek is smiling a little as he leans in ever closer, and Craig clocks the slightest pink flush making its way across his milky cheeks, only making him look more like a perfectly porcelain doll.

“Yes, of course it is. But I can’t get into your head, Tweek; you aren’t letting me in and it’s frustrating.”

Instantly Tweek’s mood sours, and Craig realises he’s made a mistake.

“Right,” Tweek says slowly, “Okay, maybe you’re right. Maybe I _should _let you pry your way into my private life.” Craig shifts uncomfortably, wondering if now would be a bad time to quietly draw a card. Maybe then they could pretend he’d never spoken in the first place. “I won’t though, Craig, and do you want to know why? You’d get hurt, and you wouldn’t be able to handle it because even I fucking can’t!”

Tweek looks furious, electricity fizzling through his tiny frame, and it shocks Craig who feels surprisingly tiny as Tweek gets to his feet and towers above him.

“You don’t know me, Craig. You don’t know anything about me.” Tossing his hand of cards to the ground where they scatter, the blond turns and disappears through the trees, not looking back when Craig calls out after him.

“Shit,” Craig swears, scowling at the jack that’s laughing up at him from the tarmac, “_Shit.”_

Something was going on with that boy, and Craig wanted to know what, even if only to distract himself from his own problems. Tweek’s anger was electrifying, and frightening, (and okay, maybe it had aroused him only a little bit), and it hurt to see him lose his cool. Instead of his usual arcane riddles and mysterious ability to come and go, he was stripped back and raw, a scared schoolboy trying to stay strong against a battle he knew he couldn’t win.

In short, he looked like Craig.

It was another two weeks or so before Craig saw Tweek again, and he had a funny, gut-wrenching feeling that Tweek had been avoiding him deliberately. It surprised Craig, how much he noticed his absence in the school corridors and at lunch, and Tweek never looked back at him during English class, even though Craig was positive he had to feel the eyes burning into the back of his blond head.

What hurt the most was his absence at the playground. The rusting equipment groaned, mocking him, tree branches giggling as he sat there waiting for someone who would never arrive. There was a Tweek shaped hole in his life that Craig didn’t know needed filled until now. He was an addict, desperately itching for his next fix of china white skin and emerald eyes.

A soft hand rests lightly on Craig’s shoulder.

“Tweek.”

“Hi,” the latter replies, moving to sit down on the bench beside him, a little further away than Craig would have liked. “I’m sorry.”

“Where were you?”

“Sorry, I- I’ve been busy. Y’know that history assignment Mr Garrison hit us with last week?” Tweek rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably, his eyes tired and voice a little shaky, and Craig can tell that he’s holding back, spitting out excuses. “I-, yeah.”

Craig rolls his eyes, scowls a little, doesn’t tell Tweek how glad he is to have him just sitting there, eating lunch next to him and discussing menial, mundane things. Somehow he knows that Tweek can tell what he’s thinking though, when a soft, shy hand finds his own beneath the lunch table.

xxxxx

“Does it hurt?”

Tweek’s questions always had a way of throwing Craig off. Craig reckoned he probably did it on purpose.

“Does what hurt?” he pauses his iPod and narrows his eyes at Tweek, searching his face for some kind of a clue.

They were sitting in the park again, of course, Craig balancing tenderly on one of the swings. He was fairly certain he had a cracked rib, courtesy of his father’s booted feet, and was unable to get comfortable due to the sickening pain that kept flashing through him; maybe he wasn’t concealing it from his face as well as he’d thought?

Tweek lays back onto the damp grass, looks up at Craig intently. “When you wake up in the morning, and your lingering dreams ebb away,” he asks stoically, “Does it hurt you?

“I don’t dream,” Craig replies crisply, not entirely answering Tweek’s strange question, “Now that you mention it.”

Thinking about it, reality was more of a dream state for Craig than the deepest sleep cycle ever would be; like a vicious, surreal nightmare it threw him around, dragging him back and forth through time. Sleep, meanwhile, was black and empty and that was how Craig liked it. Then again, waking in the morning really fucking _did _hurt - from the moment he’d start to come round, pain would course through his skeleton and run rampant in his nervous system like a vicious drug. Craig didn’t think that was what Tweek had meant though, or if he’d even understand, and so he doesn’t ask.

“Alright,” Tweek rolls onto his side, propping his head up with a bony arm, “What’s bothering you then?”

Craig thinks of his aching ribs and the gash still healing on his forehead. Tweek had tactfully ignored it, although Craig had caught him stealing sad looks at it through his black fringe on more than one occasion. Despite this, he’d never mentioned any of Craig’s physical injuries, and that was how Craig liked it. “I thought you didn’t like people who pry,” he snips, and Tweek shrugs.

“You’re right, man. Sorry.”

“What’s your plan for after graduation?” Craig changes the subject, deciding that it’s his turn to ask an invasive question, and Tweek raises an eyebrow.

“What makes you ask?”

Craig shrugs his shoulders, “I’m curious, so indulge me.”

“Truth is, I don’t have a plan,” Tweek flops onto his back again, his eyes shifting away from Craig and up towards the candy pink skies, watching as the sun fades gently behind the mountains, “Not a real one, anyway.”

“Me neither,” Craig says honestly, then hesitates a little, considering, before he asks, “What’s your fake plan then?”

“I steal my dad’s car,” Tweek’s eyes close as he imagines, “And I just fucking drive. Away from here and all the bullshit. Just, anywhere.”

“Can I come?” Craig asks seriously, and Tweek smiles without opening his eyes.

“Yeah, dude. I’d like that a lot.”

xxxxx

Spring melts away into summer maybe quicker than it had come, and Craig takes to lying out on the warm grass of the school field during lunchtimes, fingers barely touching Tweek’s but enough to make his stomach feel strange anyway.

Neither had brought up the subject of graduation since it had been previously, and Craig had a suspicion that Tweek was dreading the end of the semester as much as he was. Why though, he didn’t know, because Tweek was smart and could probably go on to a decent college if he applied himself a little more. Recently however, as the days went on he seemed more and more distracted, like he’d misplaced a part of himself somewhere and was preoccupied with trying to find it.

Craig continues to let time wash over him, spending hours drinking in Tweek’s company from the solace of the park and the school field, attending classes he doesn’t pay attention to, and then hiding with Ruby in her room, breathing cigarettes and fear as they wait for their father to return home each night. And when the beatings numb his body Craig finds himself thinking about Tweek’s plan to run, and imagines scenes of the two of them driving towards peach and orange sunsets way beyond South Park’s confining mountains and painful memories.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tweek chews his lower lip, looks through Craig, “Some things won’t heal with bandaids and kisses, Craig; you and I both know that. Please, just leave it. One day you’ll understand.”

Craig was probably in love.

Although it had taken some soul searching, it was the only conclusion he’d been able to draw, albeit a hard one. The only people he’d loved before were Ruby and his mum - and maybe even his father before he knew better than that - but that love was familial and natural and homely. Romantic love, on the other hand, was a different ballpark entirely, and one that Craig was a little afraid to dip his scuffed trainer-clad toes into.

And so he settled for shy hands brushing together lightly, and pale cheeks that flushed rose when they did. To his credit, Tweek seemed a little perturbed by the situation too, and Craig guessed that it was as foreign to him as it was for Craig. Still, that didn’t stop Tweek from pressing shy, soft kisses against Craig’s scarred cheeks now and then, as they laid side by side on forgiving grass and warm tarmac.

“I’m scared,” Tweek sounds as though he’s been toying with the thought for a while by the time he speaks, “Of what might become of us.”

Craig pauses his iPod and searches Tweek’s face.

“School ends in a few weeks, and I-,” Tweek stops, tries to find the right words, “Things change, and people aren’t far behind them.”

Craig briefly wonders if he’s being dumped before their relationship even has a chance to blossom, but relaxes a little as Tweek lies back, rests his head in Craig’s lap and looks up at him from those deep green eyes.

“I wish we could stay like this,” Craig muses, twirling a few locks of soft blond through his fingers, “Out here together forever, away from it all.”

“I do too,” Tweek replies, a lingering note of sadness just there in his voice, “We can’t though. _I _can’t. I have to go soon.”

“Where do you disappear to all the time?” Craig asks genuinely; Tweek had only fractionally reduced how often he would blend away into the background quietly since they had begun dating, and often had to dash after glancing at his phone while they were hanging out.

Looking pained, Tweek says, “I can’t say, Craig. I’m sorry. I really hope that one day you’ll be able to understand.” Then, he gets to his feet and leaves Craig alone on the school field to gather his scattered thoughts.

At home he tells Ruby about Tweek, when he knows that their father is at the pub and not there to overhear; he’d probably have a field day if he knew that Craig was gay. Craig could imagine the creative insults he’d sprinkle over the beatings like poisonous seasoning. Ruby squeals delightedly and pulls him into a spine-shatteringly tight hug, demanding to know what Tweek looked like, if he was cute, and how did you two meet, give me details!

Craig feels a goofy smile pulling at his mouth as he talks about the weird blond kid from the park who spoke in riddles and arcane words and had the prettiest green in his eyes, and decides that, okay, yes, he’s fucking definitely in love with Tweek’s porcelain skin and pink lips. Days blur together a little less when Craig is around them, and he spends more and more time with Tweek as they go on, despite the latter’s frequent absences and sudden exits. He preoccupies his mind trying to unpick Tweek when he’s gone, desperate to unravel and know more about the demons plaguing him, and why he kept glancing nervously at his cracked mobile phone.

When Craig shows up to school with warm blood dripping from his nose and staining the cuff of his Red Racer hoodie one Thursday morning, Tweek yanks him aside and leads him in the opposite direction, away from first period English and towards the empty playing field.

“What’s going on, Craig?” he asks when they collapse onto the soft green, and flaps Craig away when he mutters something about prying and hypocrisy. “I can’t ignore this anymore - I’m scared how much you’d cost in medical bills.”

He pulls a crumpled packet of tissues out of a pocket in his tatty school bag, and uses one to gently dab at Craig’s bloody, bruised nose.

Craig doesn’t protest, but insists that he’s fine as he lets Tweek clean his face up, and Tweek looks at him with some unreadable emotion on his face.

After a moment Tweek speaks.

“Is it your dad?” he asks, so quiet that Craig almost could have missed him, “Does he- hurt you?”

Craig looks away, lets his fringe fall in front of his eyes, but the black locks don’t shield him from the pain and concern welling in Tweek’s wide green eyes. Tweek knew. He’d worked it out.

“It’s him, isn’t it?”

Ashamed, Craig nods the tiniest yes and clamps his eyes shut tight. He doesn’t realise he’s crying until Tweek’s thumbs gently wipe away the first tears that roll down his scarred cheeks, before soft hands cup his face. “Oh, Craig.”

And Craig lets himself cry; he cries the tears he couldn’t shed for his mum when she had died; tears for sweet Ruby, the glue that weakly held them together at home; and he cries for all the time he’d wasted lying in pain across his grubby bedroom floor, broken and abused and alone. Craig just cries and cries and cries, and Tweek pulls him into such a tight hug that he feels as though his arms might snap like rotten wood.

“Please, don’t tell anyone,” is the first thing Craig hoarsely manages, cheeks still streaked wet and bloodshot eyes stinging red.

Tweek, still wrapped around him like a soft, minty vice, considers the fear and shame in Craig’s voice for a moment.

“Okay,” he says, eventually. “Fuck, I just want to leave this stupid fucking town.”

They miss the rest of first period, as well as the second, and spend it lying in the grass together. Tweek wipes Craig’s wet cheeks with a tissue before snuggling into his side, letting body heat and an uneasy quiet wrap around them. A few birds chirp overhead, candy floss clouds drifting lazily in the blue summer sky above, and Craig finds himself thinking about how school would end forever in four weeks, and nothing was clear in his mind beyond that. Would Tweek still be there through the summer, and would Craig still be there with him? Craig didn’t like to think about the unspoken possibilities of what might happen to him after graduation, and tries to ignore the fear gnawing at the back of his brain.

Tweek looks similarly concerned, despite neither of them bringing the subject up further. Instead they make do with the silence, stealing glances and sad looks, letting the gentle breeze ruffle through their hair and around their bodies, and Craig wishes it would wash away the pain as it went. The lush greenery of the trees rustle and the summer sun warms Craig’s bruised face as he feels Tweek shifting his weight beside him.

And then something amazing happens.

By the time it registers in Craig’s mind that Tweek is kissing him, it’s over, leaving Craig’s chapped lips fizzling and the taste of lingering minty toothpaste on his breath.

“What was that?” he asks, taken aback, and Tweek shrugs.

“It felt right,” he explains, and stands, picking up his bag, “I have to get to history. See you, Craig!”

He turns, leaves, and Craig puts a hand up to his still bruised, still shaky lips, silently thankful that he’d been sitting down, because otherwise he was sure he would have collapsed onto his scabby, skinny knees. And then he smiles.

When he gets home that evening, the topic of graduation comes up again. Craig had been expecting it, knew that it probably would.

It’s Ruby who brings it up, fearfully asking if he was going to be leaving her alone with their father, and seeing the terror in her eyes makes Craig’s heart turn. She already knew, of course, that he wasn’t going on to college, but the mere thought of him making an escape and running was terrifying, and the tight hug that Craig wraps her in dulls the fear only slightly.

“Of course I’m not going to leave you, Rubes,” he says, pressing a kiss onto the top of her dirty blonde head, “How could I ever?”

“I hate asking you to stay,” she says, accepting the half smoked cigarette he passes her and taking a deep drag, “But please. I don’t know what I’d do here on my own.”

Craig wanted desperately to leave, of course. He wanted them both to pack bags and just go, but until it seemed more plausible, more tangible, he wouldn’t bring it up to his sister; he didn’t want her to get her hopes up, keep her running on visions of a reality that might never arrive. So he keeps quiet, smokes with her and listens to her talk about her day at school, and her friends, and whatever else she used to keep herself distracted.

xxxxx

Days roll on, and Craig visibly notices Tweek becoming more withdrawn. Since the day they’d shared a kiss on the field, since Craig had admitted to his father’s abuse out loud for the first time in his life, it seemed as though Tweek was fading in and out the way he had done when Craig first met him; he’d close his eyes with Tweek there, and when he opened them again he’d be all alone. It stung Craig, and made him angry. He supposed Tweek had been scared off by his confession, supposed the bruises and broken teeth had become too much for him now he knew the truth, and although Craig couldn’t say he blamed him, it still hurt.

“I didn’t see you last night,” he says one evening, while he sits in the park and watches Tweek revise for an exam. His own books sit unopened at his feet.

“I was busy, sorry,” Tweek doesn’t look up from the biology textbook he’s buried in, and it irritates Craig to no end. There had been a time when it felt as though Tweek wanted to spend time with him, like it meant as much to him as it meant to Craig. Now he was a flurry of excuses, coming and going more and more, melting away into the background with a quick ‘see you tomorrow!’. It was, quite frankly, pissing Craig off. Their relationship had barely had a chance to begin, and worries were already snaking into Craig’s thoughts in malicious tendrils.

He stands, the swing he’d previously occupied breathing a sigh of relief as he does, and turns to face the smaller boy, unable to contain his suspicion any longer. “Are you cheating on me?” he asks bluntly, and Tweek snorts loudly despite himself.

“You’ve got to be joking, Craig?” he snaps his textbook shut, dumps it back into his book bag, and looks up at the taller boy, an amused look on his pale face as though he’s finding the whole situation funny. Craig growls dangerously.

“Well then, where else do you keep fucking sneaking off to?” he demands, voice a sharp cocktail of anger, jealousy, and hurt all at once. “Who’s blowing up your phone so much that you can’t pay attention to me once in a while?”

Tweek’s expression falters into something unreadable as Craig looks at him stony faced.

“Of course I’m not cheating on you,” he says quietly, “I can’t believe that you’d think that.”

“Can you really blame me?” Craig’s chest lightens a little, despite the anger still coursing through his blood.

“No. I guess I can’t,” Tweek sighs heavily, looks as though he’s going to start swinging before deciding better of it, like a flightless bird desperately unable to take off. “I wish I could tell you, Craig. You wouldn’t-… It would hurt you, Craig, if you knew. You’re already in so much pain that I can’t take away - you don’t need to carry the weight of my world too.”

“Please, Tweek, just let me in.”

Although he hadn’t gone terribly in depth while telling Tweek about the extents of his home life and his dad, Craig didn’t think it fair on either of them that only his demons had reared their heads. Tweek had started carrying plasters and small bandages in his school bag, doing his best to put Craig back together when he came to school with new injuries. Craig allowed Tweek to nurse him, imagined they were just playing pretend and that his wounds had just been drawn on with red and blue marker pens. Now though, he wanted to return the favour.

“I-, you can’t,” Tweek chews his lower lip, looks through Craig, “Some things won’t heal with bandaids and kisses, Craig; you and I both know that. Please, just leave it. One day you’ll understand.”

Craig wants to understand _now _though. He wants to know how to help Tweek, how to relieve the pain from behind his green eyes and trample it into the dust. He wants to know who texts Tweek shortly after their painful conversation, making him jump up, grab his bag and leave quickly, looking over his shoulder sadly at Craig as he goes.

Ignoring the twang of guilt in the pit of his stomach, Craig knows what he has to do.

A few days go by before he manages to sneak Tweek’s phone from his school bag. While the blond is deeply engrossed in biology revision, Craig quietly reaches into one of the pockets, pulling out the cracked mobile. It’s a fairly old make, and not password protected at all. He clicks the screen on, and it lights up,** New Messages (1)**.

Craig clicks open the message, from a contact saved simply as ’S’, stomach sinking as he reads ‘_Hey. Urs at 5 tnite. Be there xxxxx S’._

So, Tweek _was _cheating on him. Fuck - he’d probably just been some kind of dirty little secret, something to fill the time during school. Tweek had never invited Craig to his home before, and never had much of an excuse as to why. Clearly this S was more than welcome, though.

Slipping the phone back inside Tweek’s school bag quietly, Craig scowls down at him. He’s still lost in his schoolwork, blissfully unaware that Craig had invaded his privacy and uncovered his web of lies.

Still, Craig knew confronting Tweek would be pointless - he would just get angry and upset, yell at Craig, then vanish into thin air in a flash of porcelain blond rage. He would be furious when he found out that Craig had pried his way into one of his secrets, and probably wouldn’t be forgiving if it turned out that it had been some kind of misunderstanding. So instead Craig begins to hatch a plan, equally invasive and awful. He needs to know the truth.

Tweek looks up from his biology coursework and smiles sweetly at Craig, who does his best to conceal his anger and reciprocate.

“Can I walk you home, later?” he proposes, not expecting Tweek to agree, however much easier it would make his plan.

“No, thank you!”

Craig shrugs, and supposes following from a safe distance, hiding behind hedges and corners and in shadows will have to do.

Craig doesn’t see Tweek for the rest of the school day, as he patiently waits for half past three. When the final bell rings he waits, stuffing his blue hat into his bag and pulling his black hood over his hair, hiding in the corners of the hallway. Tweek leaves his history class and makes his way out of the building, and Craig lights a cigarette and follows him down the stone stairs and onto the cold pavement of the street.

Tweek walks quickly, as though he knows he’s being tailed, but never turns round to look. He leads Craig away from the centre of town and its hustle and bustle, through some dark side streets and grubby alleys strewn with rotting litter. It’s in one of these cramped, grimy alleys that he stops suddenly, and Craig sneaks behind some smelly dumpsters to watch him. Tweek pulls his keys out from his pocket and unlocks a door that Craig probably would have missed otherwise; it’s nondescript, peeling chips of old brown paint, and looks altogether miserable. Tweek opens the door and steps inside quickly, and Craig hears the lock click after it slams shut behind the blond.

Craig checks the time on his battered old mobile phone; it’s only just gone four, and the minutes seem to drag on and on as he sits waiting beside the bins, the smell of rotting food and stale, stagnant puddles making him gag. A pipe drips somewhere overhead, the droplets plinking into one of the puddles all that Craig can hear over the sound of his own heart thumping loud in his chest. Occupying his mind wondering what S might be like when he arrives, Craig imagines a tall, dark and handsome figure - hotter than him, of course - approaching, and Tweek opening the front door only to collapse ecstatically into his arms. Craig Tucker who, right?

He watches the sad, brown door too, and wonders what’s going on beyond it. Was Mr. Tweak home from work? Were the two of them sitting curled up in a cosy, safe living room and discussing how school and work were going? Did Mr. Tweak know about Tweek’s mystery man? Did Tweek feel safe and comfortable in his own home? Craig wonders what that must be like.

Craig is jerked into action when he hears the sound of footsteps approaching. His phone screen tells him that it’s nearly five, and he peers out from where he’s crouched behind the reeking dumpsters. The footsteps grow louder, smacking heavily against the pavement, and a figure appears at the opposite end of the alley, turning off from the main road and towards Tweek’s front door.

Craig doesn’t know who he’s expecting to see - someone from their school, maybe? - but it sure as fuck isn’t this.

The man, probably in his forties, greying hair and scruffily dressed, knocks on the brown, peeling door and Tweek answers it with a weak non-smile. He looks tired, eyes red and puffy as though he’d been crying, and he was clad only in a large pink t-shirt that ran halfway down his thighs then stopped, leaving his pale, bony legs exposed.

“Hi, Simon,” he greets the stranger, “Come in.”


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He picks up his school bag and turns to leave, clumsy and unable to turn invisible as he’d have liked. Suddenly he’s not a riddle, not a mystery. He’s just a boy, scared and afraid, broken down by the life forced upon him by another.

“What the fuck?” Craig swears out loud, “What the _fuck_?”

Surely this grown man isn’t S? He was old enough to be Tweek’s father, with straggly greying hair and scruffy, untidied facial hair, hiding suspiciously inside a long brown coat despite the warmth of summer in the air.

It’s the only conclusion that Craig can come to though; the name, Simon, checked out, and not to mention Tweek’s fucking pink t-shirt dress - what the fuck was up with that? No one more reasonable had shown up after Simon’s arrival, knocked at the brown, peeling door. Craig probably wouldn’t have minded being cheated on as much anymore had some Sex God of a More Appropriate Age shown up, as long as it meant that Tweek wasn’t sleeping with-…

Craig shudders, feels nauseous as though he might vomit his lunch amongst the congealing takeaway cartons and scattered food scraps. He leans against the grimy wall unsteadily, trying to make some sense of what he’d seen but unable to find anything other than shock and gut-wrenching disgust.

He scours around the building, sneaking into Tweek’s back yard and hiding in amongst the shrubbery, trying to find some open window where he can peer inside and see a happy home, listen to the sound of laughter and china clinking, and let the smell of home cooked food consume around his nostrils. He hopes to discover that he’s simply just misread an innocent situation entirely; Simon must be an uncle or a family friend round for dinner, and Tweek probably just had a weird sense of loungewear, right?

All he finds though are drawn curtains and the crushing pressure of depression hanging heavy in the air.

Inside of the house someone starts shouting, and although Craig can’t make sense of the words spoken they boil his blood nonetheless. He wants to charge in, to tear Simon off of petite Tweek’s fragile body and knock him to the floor. He considers waiting for Simon to leave, hiding in the shadows so he can pounce on him and batter as many of his rotten teeth out of his disgusting mouth as possible, and he wants to wait so that he can corner Tweek, wrap him up tight and demand to know what the fuck he thinks he’s doing. Minutes drag into hours though, with no signs of movement, and when the black clouds of a summer storm begin to roll in overhead he reluctantly leaves.

As he walks home, battered trainers feeling like weights around his feet that hold him down as he trudges through puddles and asphalt, Craig can’t keep Tweek’s pale face from clouding his vision; he’d looked so beaten down and broken when he’d let Simon inside, the smile on his face not nearly making its way up to his eyes. Craig hated it; hated knowing that Simon was probably still there with Tweek, hated the smattering of kisses he’d signed his text with, and fucking _hated _that he’d not done something to try and stop the man from welcoming himself into Tweek’s home. Come to think of it, Tweek was probably as scared in his own home as Craig was in his. This realisation makes something inside Craig’s chest twist tightly, and the rain that begins to pour heavily doesn’t cleanse him, doesn’t wash away the rage coursing through his veins and threatening to boil over.

When he throws open his front door furious, and his father storms into the hallway livid that his sports match had been disturbed, Craig tells the man to fuck off, and barely feels the punch that flies into his nose. He marches upstairs, warm blood dripping down over his top lip, and thinks about telling Ruby about the situation and asking for her advice, but he decides against it and heads straight to his bedroom instead. Cleaning himself up a bit then collapsing into the soft comforter, he prays that the feather-soft bedding will ease him into sleep. Of course it doesn’t though, and he tosses and turns for what feels like an eternity, eyes clamped shut in vain as he lies there in the darkness for hours with Tweek never once leaving the backs of his eyelids.

Exhausted and with his head clouded in thick fog, Craig finds himself in the abandoned play park alone, watching the sun rise over the bordering trees and the dark mountains that stood boldly beyond them. Any and all attempts at sleep had been futile, and at some point during the night fresh wounds had appeared on Craig’s thighs. They didn’t ease him at all though, and so he walked instead, pulling on some clothes with only one destination in mind as he made his way through the early morning streets of South Park. The play equipment was surprisingly comforting in the dark; rattly chains keeping him company and the climbing frame offering shelter from the chilly breeze.

He hadn’t expected to find Tweek there, of course. As much as he wishes the blond was there, happy and safely tucked under the crook of his arm, Tweek was locked away inside his dingy house. Craig wonders if Simon was still there, or if he’d left as quickly as he’d arrived as soon as he was done taking advantage of Tweek’s delicate porcelain body. Tweek was just some kind of sick gratification for the man, and Craig hadn’t been a bit on the side - he knew that now, because nothing could make him believe Tweek could be fucking this man of his own volition.

And oh _Tweek. _All of this going on, and still he’d somehow managed to keep going, keep pushing, keep working at school, and spending time with Craig, peppered with candy cotton skies and soft kisses, talking in his arcane way that made Craig’s heart leap.

Craig’s head hurts, and _fuck _his thighs hurt even more, as he walks to school, trying to fathom how he’s going to look at Tweek let alone talk to him. Splashing through lingering puddles on the concrete pavement, he sits down outside of the main entrance and waits.

When Tweek shows up twenty minutes later he passes Craig without stopping or looking up, blond hair falling in front of his eyes, school bag clutched tightly to his chest, lower lip marked red from where teeth had bitten down upon it hard.

Tweek has gone back to his old way of blending into the crowd, Craig can tell. He’s nowhere to be seen for days, and Craig doesn’t run into him at the park either. He misses those green eyes in the hallways, and stealing glances at him from over the pages of a textbook. He’d rather not think about what Tweek might be doing in his absence.

A week or so goes by, the end of the semester looming in the distance, and Tweek wordlessly sits down beside Craig in the cafeteria. He says nothing, eats his sandwich in silence while Craig tries to strike up a conversation.

“Where’ve you been?”

Tweek shrugs and Craig doesn’t force him.

They finish their lunches quietly, before Craig leads Tweek down towards the school field. They sit down on the grass, slightly damp from a gentle summer rain that had started coming down, and Craig just watches the blond for a while, as he fiddles with his hair then pulls out a history textbook to do some revision. He looks so innocent, Craig thinks to himself, and so pure, and fuck he’s just going to have to blurt this out, isn’t he? Come out with it, and rip off the metaphorical plaster, leaving Tweek red-raw and exposed.

“Who is he?” he asks, “Simon?”

Tweek all but yells, letting out a strangled yelp of shock and surprise, and it makes Craig jump slightly. He swallows heavily, tries to sound calm and composed as he asks, “Wh-what? Who? I don’t know any Simons.”

He laughs nervously.

“Tweek,” Craig says tiredly, “I saw him. I saw you, and your pink dress-, shirt, whatever it was.”

Tweek looks like a deer caught in headlights, and seems to be considering whether or not to be physically sick as the colour drains from his face. “What do you mean?”

“I followed you,” Craig replies honestly, “After school one night last week. I read a message from him on your phone too. I had to know, Tweek. I’m sorry.”

Craig half expects Tweek to grow angry, to scream and yell at him and curse him out, then vanish into thin air in typical Tweek fashion.

Tweek just sits though, looking stunned, nauseated, and at a loss for words.

“How could you, Craig?” he asks eventually, sounding crushed and defeated.

“You had to know I’d find out sooner or later,” Craig feels guilty, wants to wrap an arm around the smaller boy and pull him in close, wants to comfort him. He feels as though it may not be the time though, as he watches Tweek retract inwardly. “So, who is he?”

“He’s just a guy,” Tweek flusters, “My dad knows him.”

“You seemed to know him quite well too.”

Tweek’s face flushes scarlet as he shakily gets to his feet.

“Wh-what the fuck, Craig?” he splutters, “I-, you-, you weren’t supposed to find out like this.”

He picks up his school bag and turns to leave, clumsy and unable to turn invisible as he’d have liked. Suddenly he’s not a riddle, not a mystery. He’s just a boy, scared and afraid, broken down by the life forced upon him by another. Craig grabs his arm, stops him from walking away.

“Tweek,” he says, softer than before, “Please, don’t go. Just try and help me understand what’s been going on.”

xxxxx

It takes a while for Tweek to open up.

Craig sits and watches him scribble something in one of his school notebooks, his thin arms shaky as he feels Craig’s eyes burning down on him. They spend countless hours on tarmac and rusty metal, as Craig tries to knock down the barriers built between them. Exams eat up Tweek’s time and he uses them to deflect Craig’s questions under the guise of being too busy to talk or explain. Craig misses the gentle kisses and feeling Tweek’s warmth next to him.

He begins to feel spacey again too, the gears inside his brain grinding to a screeching halt as Tweek gets tangled up inside them. Nights drag on for hours as sleep doesn’t visit Craig, leaving him to choke on the unwanted visions of Simon’s greasy unattractive face and Tweek’s fearful green eyes. He lies in the darkness smoking quietly, praying for morning to arrive and listening to his dad tear through the house like an alcoholic bulldozer.

His mother’s birthday arrives in early June, and his father takes it particularly hard, drinking long into the next day. When he barges into Craig’s room to yell at him and push him around he stinks strongly of cheap whisky, and there’s a pain somewhere right at the back of his dark, glassy eyes. There’s no trace of regret to be found though, and Craig decides that his father doesn’t deserve to grieve for his mum, spitting up at him. Of course, this only earns him a more aggressive, prolonged attack, but Craig considers the blob of saliva clinging to the side of his dad’s scarred cheek a small victory on his mum’s behalf, despite it not being nearly the justice she had deserved.

Wiping the spit from his rough cheek, his father’s black eyes glint dangerously as he towers above Craig’s smaller frame. His lip curls as he spits venomously, “So, you think you’re a big man, huh?”

“Bigger than you ever will be,” Craig’s reply is honest, and he already knows it to be the truth.

His father laughs a deep, booming laugh, as though Craig has just told a particularly funny joke, before answering with his fists. Craig briefly worries that he’s going to lose another tooth as hard knuckles collide with his jaw, then he falls to the floor as his father pushes him backwards. A booted foot batters into his aching ribs again and again, making Craig’s muddy brown eyes water as he lies aching across his grubby carpeted floor.

Clamping his eyes shut tight as pain races through his body, Craig wonders if his father is trying to kill him too, just like he had his poor mum, but just as he thinks the blows are never going to end, his father sighs heavily and stops. Craig opens his eyes and looks up at the man who stares down at him for a moment before turning and leaving the room wordlessly.

Feeling as though his chest is going to cave in, and with an enormous bruise beginning to blossom black and blue over his ribs, Craig collapses onto his bed after the vicious assault finally ends. He thinks about Tweek, and what he might be doing right now. Was he in as much pain as Craig was, whether it be physically or mentally? Was he thinking about Craig too in that same moment, or was he too busy wrapped up in tangled sheets and something that Craig didn’t bear to think about?

Warm summer days pass and Craig’s tired, painful body feels a little lighter as he spends them lying beside Tweek in the soft grass. He still deflects Craig’s questions and avoids his eyes when the unwanted subject pops up in conversation, as if he’s pretending that he didn’t know what Craig was talking about.

It pains Craig, the feeling of helplessness that weighs down heavy on his bruised chest as he wants nothing more than to pull the smaller boy from his desperate situation. Feeling the crushing force of a pile of bricks collapsing his ribs in, he watches the blond sadly as he turns a page in his book, eyes fluttering closed for a moment as if he’s found himself lost deep in a thought.

Eventually Craig does decide to tell Ruby, who looks horrified but has little advice to offer. Tears well deep in her eyes as she says, “Oh fuck, that’s awful.”

“I don’t know what to do, Rubes,” Craig sighs heavily, exhaling a thick plume of grey smoke, and running his fingers through his black hair, “This is breaking my heart.”

“Why doesn’t he leave?” she suggests, chewing on her lower lip.

“Why don’t we?” Craig answers grimly, “For the same reason as him - because we have nowhere to go.”

A thick cloud of smoke hangs heavy in the air, wrapping tightly around the two and suffocating them as they sit quietly, wondering why life sucks so fucking much, and Craig finds himself wistfully thinking about the plan to run that Tweek had spoken of all those weeks ago, wishing that it was tangible and in reach.

Craig and Tweek are in the park when it finally happens.

“They pay me,” Tweek cuts through the silence between them that Craig had thought would never end, then adds almost as an afterthought, “Well, they pay my dad.”

Craig looks down at the blond from where he’s sitting above him on one of the swings. “They?”

“Simon. The others. They pay,” Tweek closes his school book, visibly upset and uncomfortable as Craig probes him for more information. Who were the others? What the fuck were they paying him to do?

“I-, my dad needed cash,” he says, avoiding Craig’s eyes, “You’d be surprised how much people are willing to spend on-,” Tweek breaks off, doesn’t need to continue as something is already bubbling deep inside of Craig’s stomach.

He thinks about Tweek and his tiny, fragile frame, and how doll-like he looked sometimes, and tries not to picture dirty old men fawning our him and getting their disgusting, sweaty rocks off to the petite teen. What did they make the poor kid do? Craig doesn’t know if he wants to know.

He growls angrily, feeling fiery rage frothing up inside him, and wants nothing more than to hunt down these… these _pedophiles_, and to cut off their dicks and feed them back into their evil, soul-sucking mouths. He wants to avenge the innocence they’d stolen, and make them feel pain where they’d once felt depraved, sickening pleasure.

What the fuck can he say? What can he offer Tweek when it seems like there are no tangible words that he can string together to make things any better. Was there anything he could do to stitch the fractures of Tweek’s soul back together?

“I-, fuck,” is all he manages.

Tweek forces a weak smile onto his face, as if he’s trying to convince himself that everything doesn’t completely fucking suck, and Craig pulls him into a tight hug. Craig’s bruised ribs ache as he does so, but fuck if he cares when Tweek- oh god, Tweek.

“I can’t believe it,” he ponders sadly, before a thought crosses his mind. “Your dad doesn’t… y’know, too, does he?”

“N-no! Of course not!”

It’s only a slight weight off Craig’s shoulders, not that he doesn’t already deeply despise Mr Tweak. Who the fuck pimps out their own seventeen year old son because they’re strapped for a few quid?

“Our dads should meet,” he says stiffly, “They could start a club; Awful Fathers of America.”

Tweek laughs just a little.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Craig asks carefully, despite not knowing whether or not he wants to hear any of the gory details.

“Jesus, fuck, my dad’s gonna kill me,” Tweek groans, “After keeping it quiet for all this time. Oh fuck, oh _shit_. A few more months and I’d be legal- _fuck_.”

“Like that matters,” Craig scowls darkly. Was this what sweet Tweek had been led to believe? “What your father has done will still be punishable.”

He thinks of his mother though, and what his father had done to her. That was punishable too, and what had the police done then? Sweet fucking nothing, that’s what.

“I’m not… I’m not me when it happens,” Tweek says slowly, “I’m not there when they’re on top of me. I go somewhere else, let them do what they want. And I’m not me… for them. They don’t know me - they don’t know anything about me, as if they’d even want to. That would make what they do real, not just some sick fantasy.”

“What do they - if you don’t mind me asking - what do they do?” Craig feels as though he’s overstepped the line as Tweek closes his eyes, looking deeply pained.

“Everything, Craig,” he breathes, sounding as though something is wrapped tightly round his neck choking him, “Fucking everything.”


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Craig watches quietly for a while, taking in the view as Tweek’s chest rises and falls rhythmically, and the gentle breeze lifts and tugs at a few locks of his blond hair. He privately wishes they could lie here forever, that the bell beckoning them to afternoon classes would never ring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates will be a little slower over the next few weeks as I'm currently moving to a new city. Tags edited as the story arc has gone slightly different than I expected. Thanks to everyone who has been reading this fic so far, I hope you're enjoying it!

In time, the final day of school arrives.

It almost didn’t feel real - as he trudged towards the building and in through the double doors, it could have been any of the other thousands of days Craig had spent in the building. He still had the same heavy, aching bones weighing him down like rocks, and the same beaten up old school bag draped over his shoulder, sleep still lingering in his tired eyes. During classes though, the atmosphere amongst his classmates was suddenly electrifying, and even the teachers were visibly more upbeat than Craig had ever seen them before, as they looked ahead at their eight weeks of freedom.

The first half of the day blurs together, and Craig still doesn’t really pay much attention to anything around him, despite the buzz of his peers and teachers alike. Exams had finished for the year, so classes were filled with excited chatter and ancient DVDs as the people around him swapped anecdotes and fond memories of their school days, and Craig keeps quiet because what can he say? That he’ll only miss the safety of the school walls that had served as a comforting exclusion zone to his home life? His mouth stays zipped tightly shut, stopping any dirty secrets from spilling out to the kids that had grown up obliviously around him.

A final lunch is shared between Craig and Tweek on the warm grass of the school field. It’s almost too sunny, with the barely-there breeze whispering through the lush green leaves and branches above. The last couple of weeks of the semester had gone by quicker than Craig felt was fair, and he picks at a loose thread on his jeans while trying desperately to dart around more dreaded points of conversation.

All menial and superficial topics are eventually beaten into the ground though, and the two resign themselves to sitting in a soft silence, shifting a little closer as they lay back onto the grass. The strange heaviness in the air hadn’t let up yet, and not just between the two of them; it was spreading like a noxious gas and suffocating the entire school body. Younger students were preoccupied with summer plans to visit family and friends, and ignore any and all summer homework their teachers attempted to thrust upon them. Meanwhile the graduating class were a muddle of mixed emotions; a bittersweet cocktail of excitement, anxiety, and regret. Some were preparing to start colleges and universities in other cities and even states, while even more had already accepted that they were trapped here in South Park, and would miss the glory days spent at the high school they had once ruled over.

And then there were Tweek and Craig.

School was just as much of a respite for Tweek as it was for Craig - he knew that now. Tweek could relax here, especially now that he wasn’t constantly pouring over textbooks and revision, and lay back onto the soft grass and breathe easier. Craig supposes the park is an equally safe space for Tweek - another bubble where he could just be himself. He hopes things wouldn’t change in that respect - neither of the two were going on to further studies, and maybe they could still meet up in that park and just be the same as they had been for the past few months. God knew the blond had been all that had kept Craig relatively sane recently, and maybe Craig had unwittingly returned the favour.

Without school there would be more hours spent tucked away in their two houses, held like prisoners by their respective fathers, away from the view of worried eyes. There would be no more of Mr Mackey’s quiet, concerned words, nor the constant threat of social services to keep Mr Tucker from going that little bit too far; and there would be more time for Tweek’s tiny frame to be thrown around a dingy bedroom, resigning his worth to a measly sum of money when Craig knew that he was priceless.

Craig rolls over in the grass and looks at the blond lying beside him, skin milky, eyes closed, looking so peaceful and content that he might have been sleeping. Craig knew better than that though, and also knew that Tweek would be able to feel Craig’s bruised, brown eyes on him, because Tweek just always had a way of knowing. Craig watches quietly for a while, taking in the view as Tweek’s chest rises and falls rhythmically, and the gentle breeze lifts and tugs at a few locks of his blond hair. He privately wishes they could lie here forever, that the bell beckoning them to afternoon classes would never ring.

The elephant in the room (or field) is eventually dragged up, when Craig sits up, lights a cigarette, and finally asks, “What’s going to happen now?’

Tweek opens one green eye, and looks up at Craig.

“I can’t tell you,” he replies after a moment, sounding surprisingly serious, “Yet.”

Craig sighs a little; Tweek had started talking in riddles again recently, and fuck, he just wanted some kind of confirmation that there was still going to be a bit of porcelain blond stability in his life after the final bell would ring in just a few short hours.

“Will you still be at the park?”

“Yes, definitely. When I can be.”

Craig tries his best not to look too relieved; of course Tweek would still be at the park, right? He’d been there long before Craig ever had been, flying away from his worries on the rusty swings and hiding from the harsh world underneath the safety of the climbing frame.

“Oh, cool,” he smiles, “So I’ll see you there?”

“I’d like that,” Tweek rolls onto his stomach and absently rips a handful of blades of grass and daisies from the ground, before letting them catch the breeze and take off way beyond the suffocating atmosphere of the school. “Hopefully we can work out where we’ll go from there.”

The remainder of the final Friday afternoon passes quickly, and when the bell rings shrill through the school at half past three, a flurry of papers and students startles Craig back to himself. Some of his classmates clamour out through the door, laughing and chatting loudly, while a few stay behind and start to cry, hugging childhood friends and saying goodbye to the teacher who had taught their final high school class. Craig leaves a little dizzily, not stopping to say goodbye to Mr Adler because he’d always been a bit of a dick, and Craig didn’t give half a shit about shop class anyway.

The bell continues to ring loudly in his ears like tinnitus as he tries to wrap his head around the fact that it was really over, walking through the packed school corridor. He tries to pick out Tweek’s blond head amongst the mush of teenagers squeezing out of the building, but doesn’t catch sight of him anywhere. Sunlight pools on the concrete steps leading down from the building, and Craig turns to take one final look at the building that had grown so familiar and become such an unlikely haven over the past few years of his life.

He spots Mr Mackey standing nearby watching everyone leave, and nods at the counsellor who shoots him an encouraging thumbs up and a wave goodbye while mouthing, “Good luck.”

“I’ll need it,” Craig grumbles, not loud enough for the cheery guidance counsellor to hear him, and he gives the teacher one last weak smile, and then that’s it. His scuffed trainers meet the pavement on the other side of the school gates and suddenly he’s no longer a high school student - he’s an adult, and has to go home and face his father on a more equal playing field. Still, he doesn’t feel any different than he had when he woke up that morning, and certainly not ready to stand up to the man who’d be waiting for him at home.

He finds Ruby already in her bedroom when he gets home, a little less miserable about the end of the school year than himself, but dreading the summer break nonetheless.

“It’s gonna be a long two months,” she laments, lighting a cigarette as they both lie back on her pink bedsheets to have a good moan about how much life sucks ass. “What about you and Tweek; what are you both thinking of doing now?”

“Fuck knows, Rubes,” Craig answers honestly, accepting the crumpled packet she offers him and lighting up his own smoke, “I don’t even know what’s going through his head half the time.”

Tendrils of grey smoke twirl around them, making the room stuffy and close, and Craig sighs heavily. Still struggling to grasp that he had walked into school that morning as a kid and left as an adult, he doesn’t speak for a few minutes, trying to make sense of it all inside his mind.

“I just want to help him,” he flicks ash, turning his attentions back to the blond, “He’s like us, y’know?”

“I see what you mean,” Ruby nods, “It’s not right what happens to him.”

Ruby hadn’t been spared any details. Not that Tweek had divulged too many in the first place, but Craig had a feeling that he wouldn’t mind that Ruby knew as much as she did, and Craig knew that she would never even think to gossip about a matter so serious. It was private, not to mention people probably didn’t even know he was gay, let alone had a boyfriend - or maybe they did, and Craig was just too airy to pick up on the fact. Craig hadn’t wanted to pry incase it made Tweek retract, and instead allowed the blond to talk at his own pace as the days rolled by. So far he’d learnt that Simon and the others were mostly from out of town; they’d meet Mr Tweak somewhere deep into the internet, and travel in from Denver and beyond for the… ‘services’ they were willing to pay so much for. They’d make their way in by bus or car, without drawing attention to themselves, to the quiet mountain town where they could buy petit Tweek for as long as they liked for a sweet upfront hourly fee. It was never Tweek they paid, of course, and his father would line his pockets while Tweek would fiddle with his blond hair and wish the stifling fabric of his t-shirt dresses would drown him.

“How do you keep going?” Craig had asked him one day, watching the blond swing higher and higher like he didn’t have a care in the world. Ancient Converse had screeched to a halt on the asphalt and Tweek looked at Craig, a slight amusement flickering somewhere in his green eyes.

“The same way you do.”

“Out of spite?” Craig joked, half serious.

“I guess that’s one way to put it.” He stopped to think for a moment or two, before adding, “And knowing that I’ll get out so soon.”

Craig hadn’t asked what he meant by that at the time, but hoped with everything in his aching chest that wherever Tweek was going, he could go with him.

xxxxx

How he and Ruby hadn’t heard their father return from wherever he’d been all evening, Craig didn’t know. The man had probably been drinking at Skeeter’s bar, judging by the smell of cheap liquor lingering in the air after he barges into the small room. He makes his presence known by throwing open Ruby’s bedroom door and crashing unceremoniously through the threshold, making both siblings jump in fright and Craig nearly drops his lit cigarette. A dangerously thin smile spreads unnaturally over their father’s lips as he towers over the pair of them.

It was a mystery, how long the older man could have spent hidden in the shell of the house, lurking undetected just behind the thin wood of the bedroom door, and Craig’s blood runs cold as he realises he’d just spent the last fifteen minutes gushing unabashedly about Tweek. He hadn’t exactly been regulating his volume either, and his father _must _have overheard at least something incriminating, and god, he was going to have an absolute field day with this. Ruby looks visibly concerned for his welfare, chewing on her lower lip as the older man leers over Craig and orders him to retire to his own room.

“No wonder you’ve always liked hanging out in the girl’s room,” he sneers, looking as though he’s still deciding whether to be amused or disgusted by the sudden revelation of his son’s sexuality, “I should’ve known you were like… _that_.”

Craig remains silent, quietly wondering what his father is going to do to him, and praying that if he actually dies it will be quick and relatively painless. His father is eerily calm given the situation - he’d normally be laying into Craig with stony fists by now, and the sight of his father simply looking down at him with nothing more than a slight smirk is almost unsettling.

The older man continues, “… _and _you’ve somehow managed to find yourself a boyfriend? Your mother would have been so _proud_; it makes me sick. She always _was _too open about these kinds of things.”

Craig feels his blood begin to bubble and boil a little; his father had no fucking right to talk about his mum, let alone decide how she would have felt had he not ripped her life away from her prematurely. Fighting the urge to vomit from sheer rage and embarrassment at having been outed, Craig manages to spit out, “_Fuck you!_”

His dad sniggers. “Yeah, you _would _like that wouldn’t you, you fucking faggot?”

Craig finds himself almost wishing for the usual beating, instead of whatever this was. It would be painful, but as his father stands over him abnormally cool and collected for the situation, the humiliation pulsing through his bloodstream makes him want to shut down entirely.

And suddenly it’s as if his prayers have been answered, as his father abruptly lunges forward and grabs him by the front of his shirt, knuckles white as his strong hands fist in the soft cotton.

“I think your type are fucking disgusting,” his dad tells him bluntly, “And I don’t approve of it.”

Unsurprisingly, Craig had already guessed this long ago - his father wasn’t exactly known for having progressive world views or basic human decency, after all. Craig resigns himself to the sorry fact that the larger man was probably going to try and beat the gay out of him after he was done spitting hatred, so he’s more than surprised when his father leaves after berating him for a few more minutes, and only giving him a few token shoves around his bedroom.

The bitter stench of cheap whisky doesn’t leave with his father, hanging heavily in the air after his departure, wrapping around Craig’s throat and choking him tightly. He decides to sneak out, before his father changes his mind and comes back to break his bones, with the thought that Tweek might be waiting for him at the park elevating his mood significantly.

A moody grey storm cloud had rolled in at some point since Craig had arrived home that afternoon, although he barely registers it until he’s already cleared two streets away from his house. Cool summer rain begins to hit against the pavement, growing heavy quicker than it should have, and Craig is soaked through to his skin before he can reach the end of the third road. By the time the park comes into view the rain is torrential, but when a shock of blond pops into Craig’s field of vision he suddenly doesn’t feel the icy bullets lashing against his pale skin anymore.

A gap toothed smile melts easily onto his face as he sinks down onto the damp seat of the swing beside Tweek’s own, chains clinking and groaning in agony as he does so.

“Wouldn’t it make more sense to take shelter?” he chuckles, taking in the sight of Tweek, clothes wringing and blond hair plastered to his forehead.

“Probably. But I don’t care.”

Fair enough, Craig thinks, and he starts to swing through the wet evening air, imagining that the bruises and scars on his skin are melting away with the rain, and that when the sun would eventually break through he’d be able to smile without feeling like it was a lie.

If only it were that simple.

The quiet between them comforts Craig for a while; the distant chugging of cars on Main Street barely audible beyond the barrier of trees and iron fencing. Rain continues to pour down, penetrating Craig and Tweek and making the latter shiver just a little as it forcefully drums a tattoo into the gum speckled tarmac of the playground.

A sliver of light begins to cut through the rainclouds.

No wonder Tweek considered this such a special place; what Craig once had seen as a dreary grey mess of rusting steel playground equipment and crushed drinks cans laying abandoned was now a force field, as though the perimeter of the park would keep the two of them tucked away from the world in a bubble of graffiti-tagged safety. This was Tweek’s park, and Craig considered it the highest honour that he’d been welcomed into the quiet confines of the trees.

It would be all too easy to spend the entire summer here, whether Tweek was present or not. Away from the bustling streets of South Park and the vaguely familiar faces that surrounded him, it was easier to breathe; the streets were congested and a bit too loud, while his own home was stuffy and tense and painfully silent. But here, the rustling of trees and shrubbery served as soft, constant company, and the ancient climbing frame was a surprisingly appealing hideaway from the rest of the world. It was a perfect place, hidden in plain sight, and it almost felt like home now. Or maybe that was just Tweek.

“My dad found out.”

“About us?”

“Yeah.”

Tweek places a soft hand in Craig’s calloused own, stroking his palm gently.

“He took it surprisingly well,” Craig adds, “But he’s probably just deciding on the most fun way to murder me when I get home tonight. If I’m not here for a few days, call the cops - they’ll find me in a shallow grave.”

Tweek forces a laugh, but Craig doesn’t miss the worry that flashes across his face. “Craig-.”

“I’ll be fine,” Craig retracts his hand, feeling guilty knowing that he’d added another stressful brick to the pile that was already weighing heavy on Tweek’s chest.

Tweek shushes him, and leans over to press a soft, wet kiss onto Craig’s chapped lips. His heart twists in his chest, and for a few seconds he forgets that soon enough he’ll have to return to his hollow home and spend the night worrying that one of them won’t make it through to see the light of morning. For a moment it’s just them in their own little world, away from all the bullshit and the harsh wounds life had thrust upon them. Craig sighs shakily against Tweek’s mouth, leaning in, lapping up the moment and relishing in the flash of calm against his otherwise chaotic existence.

When they break apart, Tweek looks deep in thought, as though he’s contemplating whether or not to break the silence. Rain continues to beat down, but eases off just a little, and the leafy smell of plants and damp soil fills the air.

“Craig,” he says slowly, a troubled look still on his face, “I-, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

Craig is disconcerted, but he’s fairly sure he’s not going to be dumped now, so urges Tweek to go on.

Tweek searches for the right words for a moment but comes up blank, so instead reaches for his tatty old schoolbag lying abandoned beside the swing set. He opens it, unfolds a plastic bag that had been stuffed into one of the inner pockets, and holds the schoolbag out for Craig to see.

Craig peers into the scruffy bag, and his breath hitches when he realises what Tweek is showing him.

“Is that-?”

“Yes,” Tweek says shakily, barely audible over the sound of the rain.

“But… how?”

Tweek’s eyes closes and he looks pained. “I didn’t know what else to do, Craig,” he says quietly, “You have to understand that.”

Craig nods wordlessly, realising that his mouth is hanging open in shock and quickly shutting it.

“I’m leaving,” Tweek continues, “And I want you to come with me.”

He reaches into his bag and tucks the separate plastic bag back into its pocket safely, zipping the schoolbag up and standing. He slings it over his shoulder and looks back at Craig.

“I’ll be here tonight. It’s up to you. One o’clock.”

He turns and leaves, walking through the rain away from Craig, leaving the latter to gather his scattered thoughts, and try and make sense of the stacks and stacks of bank notes stuffed into Tweek’s battered schoolbag.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No iron-fisted punch to the jaw, no steel toe-capped boot to the ribs had ever come close, had ever strangled him like this was doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: updates will be slow  
Also Me: updates less than 24h later

Stuffing his headphones into his ears and turning the volume on his iPod up as high as it can go, Craig stands and relieves the chains of his weight. The loud music screaming angrily into his eardrums still isn’t loud enough to cut through the haze smothering his brain as he splashes home through murky puddles and cracked depressing streets. The journey barely registers in his head as he trudges over the wet pavement, past lines of chugging cars and bustling pedestrians, and Tweek’s words go round and round in his head like a record stuck on repeat.

“I’m leaving.”

Craig had absolutely no doubt in his mind that Tweek was deadly serious, and suspected he would go with or without Craig, regardless of the fact he’d invited him along for the ride. Chewing on his lower lip and trying to untangle the thoughts wiring tightly around him, he begins to wonder about what kind of fate could have befallen Mr Tweak. Craig didn’t reckon he would have given his illicit cash up without a fight, given the extreme means in which he’d taken to procure it in the first place. He finds himself picturing the faceless Mr Tweak laying dead, face down and alone inside his dingy house, locked behind the brown peeling door with no-one to mourn him.

Of course, he wanted to run away with Tweek, he really did; the blond felt more and more like home with each and every meeting they shared, and he didn’t want to lose that now. Not to mention he didn’t fancy spending another day alone and suffocating under South Park’s crushing atmosphere, waiting for the day he wouldn’t make it out alive.

He didn’t care about leaving his alcoholic, abusive excuse for a father behind, of course, but what about Ruby? Could she come along with them? Would she even want to? What could happen if he did leave her alone in the custody of their father? Some of the possibilities didn’t bear thinking about, and Craig picks up the pace, deciding that he might as well ask her for her input.

Their father is mercifully absent from the house when Craig arrives home, and he finds Ruby watching TV in the living room for a change. She tells him that their father had returned to the pub to meet some of his unpleasant drinking buddies, and probably wouldn’t be back for another few hours yet. Exhaling a sigh of relief and lighting two cigarettes, Craig passes one to his younger sister, before sitting back onto one of the threadbare sofas, bracing himself, and tentatively telling her about Tweek’s proposal.

Ruby looks uncertain and a little hurt when Craig finishes speaking, but immediately encourages him to go with Tweek nonetheless, insisting that she’ll be fine by herself for a few short years.

Craig cuts across her. “I’m only going if you come too.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“What is there to not understand? I’m not leaving you alone with him, Rubes.”

“But, I-,” Ruby looks like a deer caught in headlights and Craig shrugs.

“Alright. I’ll stay.”

His younger sister looks guilty, and slinks off up to her bedroom shortly after. Craig thinks about Tweek, and what he might be doing in that moment; was he busy packing a bag full of bare essentials, or booking a plane ticket to who only knew where? Maybe he was disposing of his father’s mangled corpse, digging a shallow grave in his back lawn, or drawing a bathtub full of sulphuric acid?

Craig really hadn’t taken the blond for a killer, but people can always surprise, right?

Or, maybe Mr Tweak was fine; maybe Tweek was being tortured again, kept going only by the knowledge that his bag full of stolen cash was hidden away under his bed and he was finally going to get out.

Craig stubs his cigarette out on the arm of the old sofa and scowls; Tweek was going to escape captivity, and he was still trapped here like a rat in a cage, scratching and clawing at the bars in a desperate plea to be freed.

He skulks upstairs shortly after Ruby, not wanting to be right in the firing line when his father arrives home. Crashing onto his fluffy cotton bedsheets, he puts his headphones back in and tries to relax, willing the angry, depressing music to drown out the noise in his head, but to no avail. His iPod screen dimly tells him that it’s nearly eleven at night, the summer sky growing darker and darker on the other side of his cold window pane. Street lamps flicker, illuminating the water droplets sliding lazily down the glass, and Craig eventually pauses his music to focus purely on the thoughts whirring around in his mind. 

Clouding his head in thick fog, ‘what ifs?’ and ‘could’ve beens’ project through his eyes in painful visions, and he’s left to watch the rain tap quietly against his window and wonder what he and Tweek might have become in another life.

He doesn’t expect to find himself crying, not realising he’s begun to do so until his scarred cheeks are suddenly wet and his chest is tighter than it has ever felt before; Tweek was going to wait for him later that night, and he was never going to arrive. Struggling to breathe, Craig is unable to relate the pain to anything he’d felt before - no iron-fisted punch to the jaw, no steel toe-capped boot to the ribs had ever come close, had ever strangled him like this was doing. Maybe Tweek would feel the same aching constriction around his heart when he realised he was going to have to go it alone?

Still, Craig couldn’t bring himself to leave Ruby alone in this shell of a house, nor could he ask Tweek to reconsider or postpone his escape; even if his father hadn’t met some kind of sticky end, there was no way he would _ever _want Tweek to stay in that situation - not for him, not for anyone, when he had a feasible means of escape. Saying goodbye was bittersweet though, and Craig couldn’t face it, deciding that he would rather stay home and try not to break his own heart too much, than have to watch Tweek’s crack and scatter across the gum speckled tarmac.

Praying that the blankety tides will eventually pull him into sleep, Craig tosses and turns under his duvet for what feels like an eternity. His father crashes through the front door some time after the dark streets have run silent, and mercifully stumbles straight past Craig’s door and into his own bedroom without a second thought.

Raindrops glisten on the window, still lingering, clinging to the glass after the summer downpour finally eases off, twinkling amber from the warm glow of the street lamps. Someone lightly taps at his bedroom door.

“Craig?” a voice whispers uncertainly as it creaks open. Ruby.

“Hmm?” his own voice is still thick from crying, and he gruffly hopes that his sibling won’t pick up on the fact.

She flicks the bedroom light on, burning Craig’s tired, bloodshot eyes. He rubs them blearily then looks up to where she’s stood in his doorway clad in a thick parka jacket with a heavy rucksack on her back.

“I, uh, changed my mind.”

Craig briefly thinks she’s pulling a prank on him, but lights up when he realises that his sister isn’t trying to trick him; that she really has stuffed all her worldly possessions into a camouflage rucksack and is patiently waiting in the doorway for him to gather his own.

Emptying some barely touched school books and a few dog eared jotters from his tattered backpack onto his dusty bedroom floor, he bundles a few clothes into it, as well as his iPod and phone chargers, and a single can of deodorant and a comb. Ruby raises an eyebrow, amused, but doesn’t comment; her own bag was over flowing with her favourite products and potions, judging by the rattly clinking sound it was making as they crept downstairs.

They’ve almost made it to the front door, Craig with keys in hand ready to unlock it, when something grabs onto one of his bag straps, tugging him backwards and causing him to stumble a little. He turns, and finds himself looking up into the confused and angry eyes of their father.

“Where the _fuck_ are you two going?” he demands to know, cold black eyes darting between the pair.

Ruby shuffles uncomfortably on her feet, looking down at her boots and saying nothing.

Craig, on the other hand, scowls up at the older man still tightly holding on to him. “Away,” he answers tartly, making their father snarl dangerously.

“Over my dead body, boy,” he growls, snatching the ring of keys from Craig’s hand and tossing them down the hallway, “You’re not going anywhere.”

Finally ripping himself away from the clutches of his father, Craig goes to retrieve them from where they’ve unceremoniously landed in the corner, and while his back is turned their dad takes the opportunity to grab onto Ruby’s blonde ponytail, and she screams, terrified, as he drags her towards him. The sound slices through Craig like a rusty blade, and he roars, dumping his bag and lunging at the older man. As the two collide, Craig manages to knock his father to the floor, causing him to release his grip on Ruby’s hair as he loses his balance.

All the time he’d spent over the years making sure that the man never laid a finger on his sister had gone to waste, right as they’d finally been making their escape. Still, Craig wasn’t going to let him get away with it, and he throws a furious punch down onto the man’s left eye, hoping to leave a nasty purple bruise above the fading scar on his stubbly cheek.

His father grunts in pain before wrestling Craig off and overpowering him, pinning him down to the grubby hallway floor and assaulting him with blow after blow. Craig feels something behind his face crack with a grisly crunching sound, wincing in pain during the brief seconds between attacks. He can feel warm blood running down his face, and it stains his father’s knuckles as they make contact once again.

“Stop! Fucking stop!” Ruby’s horrified voice cracks as she shrieks in horror, unable to pull their father off of Craig’s smaller frame. She tries a different tactic then, raising one of her Doc Marten clad feet and taking aim.

The sound their father makes when her boot strikes, bullseye, between his legs is almost unholy, and he finally rolls off of Craig, retching in pain as though he might be physically sick. Craig can’t help but laugh when he realises what Ruby has done, despite the pain that pulses from his nose as he does so.

“Nice shot,” he says weakly, trying to pull himself to his feet.

“Thanks.”

Their father, cursing and grumbling in pain, starts to get up too, and Craig picks up the pace, turning briefly to pick up the house key. In the few moments that his back is turned, Ruby screams again, and when he turns back around the man is towering over her, leering down and looking almost demented.

Fury courses through Craig’s bloodstream.

Grabbing the closest item he can find, which proves to be a ceramic vase his mum had left on the side table before she’d died, Craig bellows at his dad, “Get off of her, you fucking psycho!”

The man turns around, looks as though he’s about to start laughing at Craig who all but flies at him, raising the vase over his head as high as he can, and bringing it down hard. It cracks, sending a few small shards of white ceramic shooting off in all directions, and Craig wastes no time, lifting it and bringing it down for a second time, and a third. Blood begins to run down the older man’s face as he tries desperately to disarm the younger, droplets of crimson spraying over Craig and onto the wall behind them. Craig doesn’t stop to worry about that though; by the time he finally relents there’s barely any ceramic left in his hands which have somehow become deeply lacerated - how had he not felt that?

Their father’s bloodied form had collapsed to the floor at some point too, from where he didn’t stir.

“Is he… dead?” Ruby asks uncertainly, sheet-white and horrified.

Craig kicks the man sharply in the ribs. Nothing. He shrugs, and grumbles, “I fucking hope so.”

Little white and blood red shards of ceramic litter the carpet, and Craig quietly wonders if their mum might be able to rest a little easier now that she had been avenged. Maybe, as her old vase had shattered, the walls of her limbo had broken down too, finally allowing her to break free from the confines of their hollow home.

“Fuck,” he breathes heavily, before reaching for the keys, and looking up at his sister. “Let’s go. Now.”

xxxxx

The screen of Craig’s cracked old mobile phone lights up; ten to one. He wasn’t sure how long Tweek intended to hang around the playground waiting for him, so he locks the door quickly and picks up a brisk pace, urging Ruby to follow suit. He also wasn’t sure how the blond would react to him bringing Ruby along, but figured it would probably be alright. Besides, there was no way that she could stay in their old house - not now that blood was staining a morbidly deep red silhouette of their father into the hallway carpet. Craig hadn’t bothered to move the body.

“I can’t wait to meet Tweek!” Ruby tries her best to sound upbeat as they turn through the streets, the wet tarmac glittering under the glow of the street lamps, puddles splashing under her Doc Marten boots.

Craig smiles weakly in the dark; Tweek had expressed on a couple of occasions that he was looking forward to meeting Ruby too; a given considering she was essentially the glue that had kept Craig from shattering long before they’d had a chance to meet.

Maybe now, with their father out of the picture, she wouldn’t need to take up the role of family Pritt Stick anymore. Maybe now she’d have a chance to just be a kid again, like any other fourteen year old girl, instead of spending her life locked away, hiding in her pastel pink bedroom.

But of course she couldn’t, because nothing would ever be normal again, would it? Craig kicks a stray pebble across the street with a clack, and wonders what on earth they’re going to do now.

It’s just gone one when they arrive in the dimly lit park, but Craig doesn’t miss Tweek’s shadowy figure sitting on one of the swings. He stands as they approach, and slings his bag over one shoulder.

“Hi, Craig!” he grins, “You came! And you must be Ruby?”

“So glad to meet you!” Ruby pulls Tweek into a tight hug, and breathes in his ear, “Hurt my brother and I’ll hurt you more.”

Craig laughs just slightly, and thankfully Tweek giggles too, clearly not intimidated by the shorter girl clinging onto him.

“Don’t worry!” he replies brightly, “I definitely don’t have any intentions to do that!”

Ruby beams, turning to face Craig and professing her approval, sounding satisfied.

Tweek looks up at Craig too, his cheerful expression finally faltering. “Craig? What happened to your nose?”

Although he’d wiped away most of the blood from his face, Craig could feel that his nose was still dripping a little from where his father had most likely broken it.

“Not 'what',” Craig mutters darkly, not wanting to discuss it further with Tweek, not now, “But who. I’ll give you three guesses. So, where are we going?” he steers the conversation away from his battered face, beginning to feel the weight of his bag crushing down heavily on his back, and just wanting to curl up and sleep for days.

“I don’t know,” Tweek shrugs, and Craig’s face falls.

“You-, you don’t know?” he asks, bewildered, “Don’t you have a plan?”

“Nope! I was thinking we could just drive and drive."

“You have a car?” Craig raises an eyebrow, and Tweek answers by jangling a set of keys.

“Well, my dad does. Did.”

He leads them down one of the paths and out of the park, onto a gloomy backroad where a beaten up, silver 2001 Toyota Corolla was waiting. If Craig hadn’t known any better he’d have assumed the car had been abandoned, as it jutted out into the road only half hidden by the shadows.

Craig stupidly forgets to call shotgun and spreads out across the back seat, while Ruby makes herself comfortable up front and Tweek forces all their bags into the boot and slams it shut.

Muscles and bones aching, Craig shuts his eyes as Tweek squeezes into the drivers seat and turns the key in the ignition. “Anywhere you’d like to go?”

Craig considers for a moment without opening his eyes. All roads could lead back to South Park eventually, and all he wanted to do was get as far away from the place as they possibly could. They could drive to Denver Airport and hop on the next departing flight to Fuck Knows Where for all he cared, as long as it was some place far away from here.

He doesn’t need to answer, though, because Ruby interjects, “Let’s just fucking drive!”

Tweek shrugs, lifting the handbrake and shooting out of the alleyway quicker than Craig had expected.

“Do you have a license?” he grumbles from the back seat as Tweek drives them too quickly through the streets of South Park before breaking past the city limits. Tweek doesn’t answer, and flicks the radio on to the first station he finds.

Craig lights up a cigarette in the back and drapes himself over the seats, trying his hardest to relax despite himself. His nose stings with every breath he takes, and his body feels bruised and broken, and now he’s a fucking murderer and he can hardly even bring himself to care because, oh god, it was all finally over.

Ash stains the back seat grey as the radio hums quietly, and Ruby and Tweek strike up a hushed conversation up front as Craig exhales billows of smoke into the car. The two chat pleasantly, getting to know each other as though they weren’t all running away from some fucked up shit. Craig wishes this was normal; that they were just three friends out for a late night drive. It wasn’t normal though, and it was probably never going to be normal ever again.

xxxxx

When Craig comes round he briefly wonders where he is, before remembering that he’s spread over the back seat of Mr Tweak’s beat-up 2001 Corolla and he’s now a murderer. Sitting up, his aching bones screaming in protest as he does, he realises they’re parked in the lot of a low-rent diner off some highway, and Tweek and Ruby are waiting for him.

“Morning, sleepyhead!” Tweek smiles back at him, “Food?”

As though to agree, Craig’s stomach gurgles. The dashboard reads just after seven; they must have been driving all night.

“Where are we?” he asks, running his fingers through his black hair in some semi-attempt at looking half presentable - hard when your face is bruised and crusted in blood, and you’re missing a front tooth.

Tweek tells him they’d turned northwest after Denver, and were somewhere near Salt Lake City. Craig nods, pretends to be interested in wherever they’re headed, and follows the other two into the diner.

Squishing into a free booth, they order breakfast and eat quietly, and Craig thinks about the events of the previous night. How long would it take for someone to find their dad’s body, their empty rooms, and connect the dots? Suddenly his pancakes taste bitter and the golden syrup looks like putrid bile on the plate.

Dropping his fork onto the plate, he stands and heads towards the men’s room to clean up a bit, then out of the diner to smoke and walk. The break of morning was still on the horizon, peering over the tall mountains in the distance. Craig wonders if Ruby had confessed to Tweek what had unfolded as they were leaving last night, or if he’d have to tell the truth himself, and watch the pain flicker in those green eyes.

When he’s halfway through his second cigarette, the blond comes outside to join him in the chilly morning. He offers Tweek the crumpled packet which is accepted, and they smoke together in the fresh air.

“Craig,” the smaller boy begins eventually, “This is so fucked up.”

“How did you get the money?” Craig asks, and Tweek sighs beside him.

“I put sleeping pills in my dad’s coffee,” he replies, “Then tore the house apart. It was in a suitcase in his wardrobe; he never was good at finding hiding spots. I used to always win at hide and seek.”

“My dad’s dead.”

“I hope mine is too,” Tweek replies, before backtracking a little guiltily. “No, I don’t. Do I?”

“I hate what he did to you,” Craig says honestly, and Tweek looks up at him.

“I do too. But he’s still my dad. I can’t go back and find out now, though.”

“At least I know mine is rotting in hell at last,” Craig says dully, flicking the butt of his cigarette into a gutter and looking down at Tweek, “And I hope yours is too.”

Nothing more is said, until Ruby runs out of the restaurant and straight in between her brother and new best friend, dragging them back towards the ancient car and breaking apart what could very well have turned into a kiss.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guilt wraps itself around Craig’s chest and starts squeezing him tightly, choking him and making his own eyes water a little; he’d made a lot of mistakes during his short stint on this earth, but this was quickly becoming the worst one yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a quick warning, this chapter features a pretty graphic depiction of self harm. If this is likely to trigger you please take care! A shorter chapter this time. Updates will continue to be more spread out now that classes have started up. Fun fact, my original plan for this story was to end it at the three running away but I'm having so much fun writing it that I want to keep the story going!

Whispers, rumours, and old photos of each of the three circulate through the news stations and social media posts; fantastical stories of a cold blooded teenage killer and his accomplices entertaining the masses for a good week or so. If only they knew the truth, knew that the trio were running from more than just Mr Tucker’s lifeless body.

Mr Tweak had appeared on the news several times, masquerading as any other forlorn parent desperately begging for the safe return of their lost child, with a picture of Tweek as a toddler flashing across the screen, his wide eyed innocence touching the heart of the nation.

“Someone has to know where my son is. Tweek, if you’re watching now, wherever you are, please come home. You’re not in any trouble, I just need you back home with me-.”

Craig shuts the TV off, unable to continue looking at the man’s ugly face any longer, and reeling from the venomous lies pouring from his serpent tongue. Richard Tweak didn’t miss his son at all - he missed the easy income that came with him. His clients were no doubt unimpressed with Tweek’s sudden absence, and would retire back to the hidden depths of the internet to find a new toy, leaving Mr Tweak out of pocket and stuck in a rut. He’d even gone as far as to suggest that Craig had kidnapped sweet, innocent Tweek, and that he was a dangerous criminal who had to be stopped right now, immediately (despite the fact that Tweek had drugged him and stolen his beaten up old car).

And as for Craig and Ruby? They were the hot topic of the moment; a loner turned killer and a sweet young girl dragged along for the ride. No news anchor or police detective knew a thing about what had gone on within the confines of their small suburban home in that quiet mountain town.

Or then again, maybe they did and just didn’t care, instead choosing to draw their own wild conclusions from the blood-soaked hallway carpet and the husk of Mr Tucker face down and dead in his own congealing vomit. Their reports were works of fiction, and Craig didn’t want to read a tabloid ever again.

Tweek was actively ignoring the lies, pretending to be oblivious to the walls that were caving in around them; he’d talk brightly to Craig and Ruby, telling them stories of the new life they’d build for themselves and acting like the world was their oyster - except it wasn’t. Craig doesn’t miss the flash of pain behind those troubled green eyes whenever Mr Tweak would appear on television, even when the blond would start playing pretend again. Meanwhile Ruby was growing more visibly upset as the days rolled on, with each cheap hotel room they passed through and every highway they drove down.

“Tweek,” Craig shatters the silence that had befallen the one bedroom motel room, “What are we doing?”

The blond smiles weakly, in some attempt to appear cheerful, “Well, tomorrow we can start driving north, and then-,” he stops when Craig cuts in.

“No, Tweek. I mean, what the _fuck _are we doing? How has it come to this? I’m a wanted man, for god’s sake. I thought I was saving Ruby that night, when really I’ve just dragged her into this… whatever it is.”

“We can’t go back,” Ruby says hoarsely from where she’s sitting in the corner of the room, curled up in a small chair. She had the look of someone who would like to think they were anywhere else, and Craig has a sneaking suspicion that she’d been spending quite a bit of time in the bathroom crying; it would explain her croaky voice, and not to mention the redness staining her eyes.

Guilt wraps itself around Craig’s chest and starts squeezing him tightly, choking him and making his own eyes water a little; he’d made a lot of mistakes during his short stint on this earth, but this was quickly becoming the worst one yet. He’d orphaned his younger sister, then stolen her away from her friends, her school, and her life, and for what? Long nights spent in cramped motel rooms, suffocating in the tense, rotting air and huddling together with someone who had been a complete stranger to her only days before? This wasn’t how he’d imagined running away would go; there was no gold paved road leading them out of South Park and into a honey yellow sunset, just gritty tarmac and grimy sinks and moth-bitten bed linens.

It had been a mistake, grabbing hold of the vase on that fucking fateful night. They could have made a run for it, escaped their father’s clutches without the blood and shattered ceramic, without ripping open wounds and exposing them to a life on the run.

“Ruby’s right,” Tweek agrees, “I’m sorry, Craig. I thought I was helping.”

Craig softens just a little.

“I know. I just wish it was easier.”

xxxxx

Craig begins to get tired of the road.

Motion sickness starts tugging at his stomach uncomfortably, as Tweek’s foot slams on the gas and sends them flying faster down another faceless highway. Worrying that he might have to throw up into one of the old takeaway bags littering the footwell, he resigns himself to spreading across the backseat, focussing on his breathing, and trying to ignore the nausea.

They start bearing north, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, and Craig can’t bring himself to admire the lush scenic views through the window over the sickness biting at his stomach and the dark thoughts that had begun swirling through his consciousness. The radio hums quietly in the front, barely audible over the sound of the engine roaring. Ruby had fallen asleep some time ago, and Tweek doesn’t talk as he drives them further away. Craig sometimes wonders if he’s paying any attention to the road unfolding in front of him at all.

With every long road they clear, Craig’s mind grows foggier and foggier, black smog choking his brain and making everything seem fuzzy at the edges. This was insane; they had no idea where they were going, and the money stuffed into Tweek’s battered old school bag would run out eventually. Every town they stopped in could be the one where someone recognises them and gets them dragged back to South Park in handcuffs.

Craig’s forehead thuds against the windowpane as the first drops of a summer shower begin to roll down the glass, and he quietly thinks about the porcelain blond in the driver’s seat, and how he suddenly seemed more vulnerable than ever as he drove them aimlessly through ignored speed limits and stop signs. Tweek never had a plan - he was just as much a scared child as Craig himself, hiding behind his arcane speech and aloof demeanour. Come to think, now that they’d run away, that part of him had begun to cut itself away, as though he’d left it at home with his father.

The rise and fall of Ruby’s chest as she sleeps makes Craig’s own ache; she should be in school, giggling with her friends and flirting with that boy from her chemistry class that she liked, but here she was passed out from stress and exhaustion in the front seat of this cramped stolen car. At least she was blissfully dead to the world for now, at least until they’d pull to a stop in the next deadbeat town they’d call home for the night.

Evening begins to roll in, dark clouds looming over the bordering mountains and pine trees, and Tweek has been driving for a good six hours straight. By the time they roll into the next town and disguise their identities the best they can it’ll probably be pitch black - perfect cover for renting a room in a seedy motel undetected.

Yawning as they approach a flickering neon ‘Vacancy’ sign, Tweek spins the car into the motel lot and parks, before pulling a black beanie hat over his fluffy blond hair. He places a hand on Ruby’s shoulder, rousing her from her sleep, and she blearily pulls a baggy sweatshirt on, hiding behind the hood as best she can. Craig, the most wanted of the three, makes do with running his fingers through his black hair, tousling it, and putting on a pair of sunglasses even though it’s nearly eleven at night, and come to think of it, he’s not too sure he really cares if he’s arrested anymore - as long as Ruby and Tweek would be put somewhere safe from harms way.

If the spotty faced clerk recognises them, he doesn’t say. Handing them the key to Room 7, he makes a sleazy comment about threesomes and winks at Ruby who flips him off as they turn and leave the reception, making their way towards the decrepit front door to their room.

Inside proves to be just as run down as the exterior, as Craig flips on the light and illuminates patchy walls, a messily dressed double bed, and an ancient television only slightly bigger in size to a postage stamp.

“Home sweet home,” Craig snips bitterly, taking a seat on the bed and sending springs groaning in agony under his weight.

“It’ll do for a few nights,” Tweek says, still trying his best to appear cheerful it seems, and Ruby chews her lower lip as though she’s debating whether or not to comment.

Irritated, Craig can’t help but bite back, “No, Tweek, it won’t do. This is a fucking nightmare none of us can wake up from.”

“Craig, I’m sorry. If I could turn back time I would but-.”

Tweek’s words only infuriate Craig further, sending his stomach reeling with pain and aching guilt. He knew what kind of home Tweek had to go back to, and he didn’t deserve to face any of that abuse on Craig’s behalf (Ruby’s, maybe, but Craig was biased, and anyway they couldn’t go back now either).

Ruby lets out a quiet sob, not making it to the bathroom this time before it hiccups from her throat, and Tweek looks concerned. Craig’s stomach continues tying itself into knots - it should be him wrapping a comforting arm around his sister, not Tweek, just as it should be his shirt that her tears are beginning to stain dark.

Enraged and irritable, he storms into the poky en suite to escape, slamming the door behind him and turning the rusty lock. He runs the tap and splashes some icy water on his face, sending droplets splashing across the cold floor tiles. Craig looks up into the mirror and doesn’t realise he’s directed a punch towards his own reflection until his hand starts to sting and bleed red into the ceramic sink.

“Shit,” he swears under his breath, shards of broken glass crunching under his trainer clad feet as he collapses down onto the toilet seat. Pain courses through his knuckles and up towards his wrist, sharp and sickly sweet.

Leaning over, he picks up one of the larger pieces of shrapnel and looks at the cracked boy staring back at him, all fading bruises and broken teeth, his greasy black hair growing shaggy and framing his pale skin. Maybe he’d imagined that being free from his father would heal the yellowing wounds that were still lingering on his milky skin, or that running from South Park would make his scarred face and missing teeth somehow rugged and manly. Of course it didn’t though, and he was still just Craig Tucker. Nothing had changed, really, and he was still hiding in fear of his father, but only from his memory now, rather than his harsh, biting words and his hands of stone.

Clenching his brown eyes tightly shut, he breathes shakily as the corner of the glass presses sharp against the skin of his left arm. He presses down gently so it only makes his pale flesh dip a little.

Bitter thoughts of his father flash through his head in a sickening picture show that culminates in visions of his mum’s broken body spread across the bedroom floor, and the _blood_. The sound of Ruby’s shrieks as the bigger man had grabbed hold of her hair, restraining her, roars deafening inside Craig’s ears, before the echos of broken ceramic and skull pierce through his eardrums entirely.

“_Fuck!_” Craig swears angrily, and he presses down before dragging his right hand sharply upwards in a painful action once reserved for his stomach and milky thighs. He supposes it doesn’t matter now; school was over, and what hope was there for someone like him in the adult world of work and happy families?

Thinking of Ruby and that fucking irritating blond sitting in the next room watching some stupid reality show (Craig could hear the crackly television set through the wall), he deliberates on what his next move will be. He _could_ stop now, wrap his t-shirt around his arm and resign himself to their pained looks and sad eyes, _or _he could just go the whole hog and press down harder.

Deciding that he probably doesn’t have much to lose now that Ruby had found a new and improved big brother in Tweek, Craig tests the waters a little and presses down a tad more forcefully. Hissing as the glass stings his arm deeply, he watches as a thick wave of blood pumps from his open wound and drips into pools on the wet, tiled floor. He briefly admires the sick crimson watercolour as it mixes with the water he’d splashed over the floor before, tangling together in a tie dye of pain and frustration.

The injury is bittersweet. The knots constricting his chest and stomach begin to unravel a little, easing the pain and pressure, but Ruby’s sad eyes burn into the forefront of his brain, judging him and his weak fucking actions.

No wonder she’d pick Tweek over me, Craig thinks bitterly, and he drops the shard of mirror almost spitefully. He grabs one of the suspiciously stained hand towels and lays it across the bathroom floor in some attempt at hiding his shame - housekeeping could deal with it later, he supposes.

Wrapping another of the ratty towels round his wounded arm, he scowls and emerges from the en suite.

Tweek and Ruby smile up at him from where they’re lying on the bed, apparently oblivious to the bloody scene that had just unfolded in the next room. Ruby’s eyes were still a little damp, but she was visibly more relaxed. Her smile falters though when she sees the towel messily tied around his forearm.

“Craig, what happened?” she asks, sounding concerned, and Tweek’s face falls too as he spots the makeshift bandage.

“You’re bleeding.”

Sure enough, a bloodstain was already beginning to blossom through the cotton, and suddenly Tweek is pulling off the towel and examining Craig’s arm. He wordlessly guides Craig towards the sink to clean his cut, yelping a little as they step over the crunchy glass still littering the tiles. Craig can hear Ruby crying in the bedroom, and _fuck _it’s his fault that she’d doing so - he feels like the biggest asshole in the known universe.

Still, after he’s been cleaned up a little, neither of the two choose to comment or berate him for his actions, and the three curl up together on the messy motel bed in a bundle of pain and body warmth, and hide from the rest of the world in the darkness and the dim flicker of the television.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We need to live for right now. We’ve wasted so many fucking years in that awful town, and for what? To live the rest of our lives scared and on the run? Then what’s changed? What was the point in leaving, if we’re still living our lives in fear? We may as well have stayed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so long since I've managed to write more of this story, mainly due to writers block and not knowing where to go with it. A bit of filler here, but I think some important development in Tweek and Craig's relationship. Please tell me if you want me to continue this fic cos I'm not sure where to go with it from here. Thanks!

Time was passing strangely; slowly but hazily, in a blur that Craig couldn’t keep up with. Maybe a week had passed, or maybe it was nothing more than a day. The blinds were down, the lights were off, with only the TV to cast dim flickering light over the grimy motel bedroom. It was cold, with the gurgling old radiator only seeming to emanate an icy chill into the room.

The place was thoroughly unpleasant, however Ruby and Tweek seemed to be attempting to make something of the dire situation; she had choppily cut her long blonde hair into a pixie cut over the grimy bathroom sink, before dying it black with a box dye lifted from a nearby grocery store. Tweek had been hiding behind sunglasses and a massive black hoodie every time he set foot outside of the motel room. The two of them were discussing plans and places they could go next, as though they were picking out family holiday destinations.

Craig, though? Craig had given up.

This wasn’t a holiday; this was darkness that was chasing them, and seeping into the cracks in their already miserable lives. The damp motel room walls seemed to be closing in, choking the air from his very lungs, and Craig’s arm was stinging in a bitter reminder that everything was fucking _wrong_.

“Why don’t we leave the States?” suggests Ruby, and Tweek rummages through the backpack full of bank notes.

“I think we should have enough,” he answers slowly, considering, “It’ll take some planning, but it would be good to get away. We can get jobs once we’re out of the country. Canada?” he suggests, “Or further abroad?”

“Do you really think we’ll be any safer there than here?” Craig asks grimly from where he’s lying depressed in the uncomfortable bed. “I don’t know if you’ve realised, but our faces are everywhere. We’ll never be able to stop running; we’ll never be able to relax.”

“Don’t be so pessimistic, Craig!” Ruby offers him what might have been meant as a smile, but doesn’t reach her eyes. “Things are going to get better - god knows they can’t get any worse than what we’ve left.”

“None of us have a home anymore! This is a mess, Ruby. I almost want to trade places with Dad, just to get out of it all.”

“Don’t say that!” his sister sounds hurt, and Craig feels like an asshole, but it’s true.

“He’s dead. He was a horrible man but got no repercussions, and now look where we are; we have nothing but each other, on the run, homeless. Tweek, your dad isn’t facing any kind of punishment for what he’s done to you! It should have gone like this - this is all wrong.”

“I know, Craig,” Tweek chews his lower lip, “Life isn’t fair.”

Craig pulls the thin comforter up until it’s right over his face. It doesn’t do much to comfort him, though, and when he shuts his eyes all he can see is shadows of his father, and shattered ceramic, and so much blood.

This was a mess.

“This isn’t going to end until they catch me,” Craig says eventually, hearing Ruby sniffle from where she’s sitting across the room. “Only then will it end.”

“We won’t let that happen,” Tweek says, sounding as though he’s trying to convince himself more than anyone else.

“It was self defence!” Ruby adds, “After everything he put us through… why does he _always _get away with it?”

The police, the courts, they wouldn’t see it like that though, would they? Mr Tucker had gotten away with murder when his mom died, and had never been punished for his years of bar fights and domestic violence, so of course the world would continue to shit on Craig. Apparently, in the eyes of the world his father was a stellar man - what logical reason could Craig have to smash his skull in?

Maybe he should just enjoy the time he has left with the two people he loves the most, before spending the rest of his life in a prison cell? Ruby is an angel, the light of his life. She deserved the world, and what did she get? A lifetime of horrors that she never should have had to bear witness to. She’s stronger than Craig; she still could have a bright future, do something with the hand she was given.

Then there was that infuriating blond, and fuck Craig hated him, but fuck, he _loved _him. Like Ruby, he’d seen unimaginable horror in such a short life, and Craig wishes he could take on both of their pain, even if it would be enough to crush his spine to dust.

There’s a silence in the room, and Craig ponders breaking it for a while; maybe it was time to tell him?

“I love you, Tweek.”

He doesn’t move from beneath the threadbare blanket, and maybe it’s not the most romantic way to tell Tweek that he fucking _loves _him, but Craig doesn’t have any energy left, and Tweek doesn’t seem to mind because suddenly he’s just _there_, and the blanket is pulled back and Tweek is kissing him hard.

“You two are so cute!” squeals Ruby from across the room, and Craig breaks away from the blond and sits up to scowl at her. Maybe she was an angel, but god were sisters annoying sometimes.

“We’ll get through this, Craig. We’ll get through it together,” Tweek says, as he pulls the cover back so to squeeze in beside him, before beckoning Ruby to join them, and the three cuddle up together to keep warm.

As they lie together in the dingy room, listening to the dripping of rusty pipes and the crackly television set, Tweek’s voice breaks the quiet.

“I love you too.”

xxxxx

Craig pulls his hood up and covers his face the best he can as they leave the seedy motel the next morning, Tweek holding onto his hand tightly as they walk towards the car to put their bags in the back. Ruby deals with check out, flirting with the clerk running the desk to distract him from the fact that her face was all over national news, before running to the car and jumping into the back seat.

“Can we get a McDonalds?”

“This isn’t a fucking road trip, Ruby,” Craig groans from the front, but Tweek takes a sharp right into the next McDonalds lot they pass anyway.

“If we get arrested because we get recognised in a fucking drive thru, I’m going to kick both of your asses,” Craig grunts, fiddling with the radio for a bit before giving up and switching the damn thing off.

The wait is tense as they make their way through the line, but maybe it’s worth it because Ruby seems a little happier once they’re speeding away from the restaurant and she has chicken nuggets and a large vanilla milkshake.

Craig supposes that anything would be worth it for her; fuck, he’d already killed a man just to keep her safe, so maybe he _could _handle prison? If it meant that she could be with a nice, normal family and have a nice, normal rest of her life, he would probably accept life in solitary fucking confinement. Maybe she’d be able to visit him, and tell him all about the cute boys in her class, and how she’d graduated high school and gotten into a good college, and how she’d met a great guy, and maybe she’d bring her kids in to meet Uncle Craig Who’s In Prison For Murder? It would be kind of like the smokey afternoons in her bedroom back home. Except it wouldn’t.

What about Tweek, though? Would Mr Tweak go to jail if Tweek reported him, or would his claims be cast aside as the law returned him to that miserable shell of a home in South Park? Craig didn’t have much faith in the system, given that they had allowed Mr Tucker to continue his reign of terror in their household for so many years - why wouldn’t the Tweaks’ case be the same?

Tweek was happier now than Craig had ever known him at school or in their abandoned playground, even driving down the never-ending highways, through state after state, with nowhere to call home. Still, Craig didn’t miss the blackness that crept into Tweek’s emerald eyes whenever he thought no-one was looking, and Craig doubts that it will ever go away. Not after what he’d seen, what he’d been through.

Tweek rolls the windows down suddenly, and turns the radio back on, switching it to the CD player and Craig recognises the moody sound of Ian Curtis’ voice spilling from the car speakers. The blond hums along quietly as he slams his foot on the accelerator, and Craig briefly wonders if he’s suicidal or something, because fuck, it feels as though they’re flying down this motorway.

“Love will tear us apart, Craig,” he says, lifting his foot off of the pedal and letting the car slow back to the speed limit, “But I don’t think I mind.”

‘It’s like you’re trying to get us arrested,” Craig grumbles, but smiles at the blond who looks more alive than he ever had in South Park, with windswept hair and a grin wider than Craig thinks he’s ever seen anyone wear before.

“The thing is, Craig,” Tweek says matter-of-factly, “We need to live for right now. We’ve wasted so many fucking years in that awful town, and for what? To live the rest of our lives scared and on the run? Then what’s changed? What was the point in leaving, if we’re still living our lives in fear? We may as well have stayed.”

He’s right, of course, but Craig can’t stop thinking about the cracked ceramic and bloodstains they left behind; of the long, painful nights and the broken teeth and bruised ribs, and why the fuck can’t they just catch a break?

“What happens if they do catch us?” he asks, wondering if he really wants to know the answer.

“I don’t know, Craig,” Tweek replies, “I guess we’ll just need to wait and see.”

xxxxx

For hours they drive, and Ruby sleeps, and Craig sleeps, and when night begins to fall Ruby wakes up and suggests that someone takes over driving, but Tweek just laughs and steps harder on the gas.

“Imagine,” he snorts, “If we got arrested because one of you two were driving my car without a license!”

“Your dad’s car,” Craig reminds him, “That you stole. I’m surprised we haven’t been pulled over yet just for that!”

Tweek looks a little troubled by this, as though it was a fact he hadn’t considered, but eventually he simply shrugs and keeps driving.

“Y’know, I think I’ve stopped caring,” he says, “I’ve cared so deeply for so long, it feels good to let go, for a change!”

He takes a sudden, unexpected left, and the jolt of the turn startles Ruby in the backseat.

“Where are we going?”

Tweek smiles to himself, but doesn’t answer, as he drives the Corolla down a dirt track, past pine trees and darkness, as though he knows exactly where he’s taking them. The car shudders as it clears the track, and Craig’s heart shudders as he imagines what would happen if they got stuck in the mud all the way out here in the dead of night.

Suddenly, the car bursts through the trees into a large clearing, and Tweek stops the car, looking pleased with himself.

“There’s always something interesting down dirt roads!” he comments, sounding satisfied, before he cranks the radio up and gets out of the car.

“Tweek, what are you doing?” Craig calls after him, watching through the windscreen as Tweek pulls himself onto the bonnet of the car and makes himself comfortable, gazing upwards towards the vast night sky.

“This place_ is_ pretty cool,” Ruby follows Tweek out of the car, making a break straight for the middle of the clearing to dance around as though she doesn’t have a care in the world, and in this moment maybe she doesn’t.

Letting the sound of Joy Division fill his ears, and the crisp evening air fill his tired lungs, Craig eventually gets out of the car and joins Tweek on the bonnet.

“I thought we were going to find another motel for the night?” he asks quietly as he cuddles in beside the blond, letting their cold hands find each other in the dark.

“This is so much better, don’t you think?” Tweek muses, as the two look up towards the galaxies of glittering stars up above them, “Out here we can pretend everything’s okay.”


End file.
